Evaluation of the Morse Fall Scale in hospitalised patients

Sir—Several risk factors associated with falls in hospitalised patients have been identified [1, 2]. Although a substantial number of assessment instruments for identifying hospitalised patients at risk of falling exists [3], their generalisability is limited [4] because only a few [2, 5] have been tested in settings other than those in which they were originally developed. The Morse Fall Scale (MFS) has been evaluated in different hospital settings [6–9] and has been used in a variety of patient populations [10–16]. In search of an appropriate tool to identify admitting patients for risk of falling, the MFS appears to be most elaborate in view of its extensive development and testing in different hospital populations compared with others [3, 4]. Its easy application in clinical practice supported this choice. However, no investigation to date has reported results of different cut-off scores of the scale. This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic value of different MFS cut-offs to determine which score would be most useful in identifying in-hospital patients at risk of falls.