Development of a patient-reported outcome to assess concerns about falling in hospital settings

Concerns-about-falling are common in older adults with poor health, many of whom are seen in hospital. Older adults with concerns-about-falling often have difficulty getting better. Many go on to fall at home and need to go back to hospital. Healthcare professionals need to be able to identify older adults who have concerns-about-falling in hospital. Yet, there is currently no accepted way to measure this. Instead, healthcare professionals use a questionnaire that was created for use at home. However, many of the questions asked are not suitable for the hospital setting, which can be frustrating for patients and healthcare professionals.We created a new questionnaire (called the 'Hospital FESI') to identify older adults with concerns-about-falling in hospital. This questionnaire was created with patients and healthcare professionals. In 250 older adults in hospital, we will test if our new questionnaire:1. can accurately measure concerns-about-falling in hospital (validity);2. produces consistent results (reliability), and;3. can identify when a person’s concerns-about-falling may put them at risk of not getting better by the end of their hospital stay and/or 3-months after they leave hospital (cut-off points).If our study shows that our new questionnaire is a reliable and valid way to measure concerns-about-falling in hospital, then clinicians could use it to identify patients who need extra support.