Citation

Ryan-Wenger NA, Kimchi-Woods J, Erbaugh MA, LaFollette L, Lathrop J. Pediatr. Nurs. 2012; 38(3): 159-167.

Affiliation

Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, National Association of Pediatric Nurse Associates and Practitioners, Publisher Jannetti Publications)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

22908460

Abstract

The 10-item Pediatric Fall Risk Assessment (PFRA) was developed to evaluate patients at low- or high-risk for falling. To avoid the unnecessary use of resources for children not likely to fall, children evaluated as high-risk are targeted for more intensive fall prevention interventions. In a retrospective, case-control design, the precision, accuracy, and error rate of the PFRA with patients ages 1 month to 24 years were evaluated. Cases included children who fell (n = 326), and controls (n = 326) were children from the same cohort who did not fall. Inter-rater agreement (precision) on PFRA cut-off scores was 95.1%, but accuracy was unacceptably low due to 60% false-positive and 58.5% false-negative risk ratings. Neither the PFRA nor three other widely used pediatric fall risk scales have sufficient precision or accuracy to justify implementing or withholding a high-risk fall prevention protocol. Several logistic and methodological challenges must be addressed before further development of these tools.

Language: en