Evaluation of falls by inpatients in an acute care hospital in Korea using the Morse Fall Scale

The purpose of this study was to determine the cut-off values of the Korean version of the Morse Fall Scale (MFS-K) that would be most useful in identifying hospitalized patients at risk of falls in an acute-care setting in Korea. This study was conducted using the medical records of 66 patients who fell and 100 patients who did not fall (no-fall patients) sampled from inpatients hospitalized at a tertiary acute-care hospital in Seoul during the period from 1 January to 30 November 2009. The optimal cut-off point for the MFS-K was found to be 45 points, which produced an acceptable sensitivity and a fairly good specificity, negative predictive value and accuracy. The highest peak on the receiver operating characteristic curve was a cut-off score of 45 points in the MFS-K. Further research needs to be performed to determine the optimal cut-off score according to subjects' conditions through daily measurement with the MFS in medical or surgical patients who are relatively homogeneous in terms of individual and disease-related factors.