Effectiveness of nursing interventions in the prevention of falls in older adults in the community and in health care settings: A systematic review and meta-analysis of RCT

Objective

To estimate the effectiveness of fall prevention programs in people aged 65 years and older involving nursing professionals.

Methods

We included available full-text randomized clinical trials on nurse-led prevention of falls in the community in people over 65 years of age and reporting the incidence of such falls. An extensive search was performed in 14 databases covering the period 2016–2018 for publications in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

The quality of the papers was assessed independently and blindly by reviewers working in pairs using the risk of bias dominios of the Cochrane Collaboration.

The hazard ratio was used as a measure of the effect size of the incidence of falls. A random-effects model was assumed for statistical analyses. The influence of moderator variables of the studies on the effect sizes was performed using ANOVAs and its 95% CI for each moderator category.

Results

A total of 31 randomized clinical trials were selected with 25,551 participants. The most frequent type of intervention was education (57.1%), followed by multifactorial models (37.1%). The probability of falling was significantly reduced by 13% in the intervention groups compared to the control groups (RR+ = 0.87). Multifactorial (RR+ = 0.89) and education-based (RR = +0.84) interventions significantly reduced the probability of falls by 11% and 16%, respectively.

Conclusions

Discarding publication bias prevention programs carried out by nurses produce a significant 10% reduction in falls. Education-based and multifactorial interventions are the most effective when conducted by nurses.