TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2009//
TI  - A multifactorial intervention for the prevention of falls in psychogeriatric nursing home patients, a randomised controlled trial (RCT)
JO  - Age and ageing
A1  - Neyens, Jacques C. L.
A1  - Dijcks, Beatrice P. J.
A1  - Twisk, Jos
A1  - Schols, J. M. G. A.
A1  - van Haastregt, Jolanda C. M.
A1  - van den Heuvel, Wim J. A.
A1  - de Witte, Luc P.
SP  - 194
EP  - 199
VL  - 38
IS  - 2
N2  - OBJECTIVE: to evaluate the effectiveness of a multifactorial intervention on incidence of falls in psychogeriatric nursing home patients. DESIGN: cluster-randomised controlled 12-month trial. SETTING: psychogeriatric wards in 12 nursing homes in The Netherlands. Participants: psychogeriatric nursing home patients (n = 518). Intervention: a general medical assessment and an additional specific fall risk evaluation tool, applied by a multidisciplinary fall prevention team, resulting in general and individual fall prevention activities. Measurements: falls. RESULTS: there were 355 falls in 169.5 patient-years (2.09 falls per patient per year) in the intervention group and 422 falls in 166.3 patient-years (2.54 falls per patient per year) in the control group. Intention-to-treat analysis with adjustment for ward-related and patient-related parameters, and intra-cluster correlation, showed that the intervention group had a significantly lower mean fall incidence rate than the control group (rate ratio = 0.64, 95% CI = 0.43-0.96, P = 0.029). Subgroup analyses showed that fall risk declined further as patients participated longer in the intervention programme. CONCLUSION: the introduction of a structured multifactorial intervention to prevent falls in psychogeriatric nursing home patients significantly reduces the number of falls. This reduction is substantial and of high clinical relevance.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0002-0729
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afn297
ID  - ref1
ER  -