The National Audit of Inpatient Falls (NAIF), part of the Falls and Fragility Fractures Audit Programme (FFFAP), has published Stepping towards improvement, an analysis of 2024 inpatient falls audit data. It found that 1,894 people sustained a femoral fracture as an inpatient, where the proportion not thought to be due to a fall was 14%. This is lower than previous years (18% in 2022 and 2023).
Introduces, for the first time, statistics that describe the age, sex and multiple deprivation of patients
In addition to key findings related to multifactorial assessment to optimise safe activity (MASA) and post-fall management, this report includes a focus on healthcare improvement, with a call for trusts and health boards to:
- Improve measurement and recording of lying and standing blood pressure (LSBP), aiming for 60% completion rate
- Increase delirium screening rates to 65%, working together with relevant trust teams
- Develop new practices that hasten the time to administration of analgesia after fall-related injury.
In addition, there are recommendations for trusts and health boards to:
- ensure providers undertake a facilities audit in 2026 and review organisational capacity to a) support patients to move safely while they are in hospital, and b) effectively and safely manage patients who have fallen while in hospital
- guarantee that severe harm is always attributed to inpatient fall-related hip fractures.
This report also includes reflection on six years as a continuous audit, concluding that there have been improvements in addressing factors that increase the risk of falling and in immediate post-fall management.
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