Abstract
Falls remain a major public health problem, despite strong growth in the research evidence of effective single and multifactorial interventions, particularly in the community setting. A number of aspects of falls prevention require individual tailoring, despite limitations being reported regarding some of these, including questions being raised regarding the role of falls risk screening and falls risk assessment. Being able to personalise an individual's specific risk and risk factors, increase their understanding of what interventions are likely to be effective, and exploring options of choice and preference, can all impact upon whether or not an individual undertakes and sustains participation in one or more recommendations, which will ultimately influence outcomes. On all of these fronts, the individual patient receiving appropriate and targeted interventions that are meaningful, feasible and that they are motivated to implement, remains central to effective translation of falls prevention research evidence into practice.
Highlights
An important aspect of individualising falls prevention interventions is the use of falls risk screening and falls risk assessment
From an early falls risk management perspective, identifying risk at a mild level, and intervening at this early stage, has potential to achieve greater impact than waiting for falls risk to become more advanced before engagement with the health service system
There has been growing criticism of falls risk screening and assessment tools recently, in particular related to the limited prediction accuracy of these tools [10,11]
Summary
An important aspect of individualising falls prevention interventions is the use of falls risk screening and falls risk assessment. Falls risk among older people varies along a continuum, from those who are healthy and active, through to those with high level of frailty, multiple comorbidities, and high falls and injury risk. The main purpose of a falls risk assessment tool is not to predict falls risk, but to identify presence of contributory factors to the individual's falls risk, which can form the basis of a multi-factorial falls prevention intervention.
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