Radial Configuration of Hospital Beds Around a Nursing Station Improves Falls Surveillance

Introduction Wards with a radial layout, where rooms are configured around a central nursing station, allow better patient monitoring by nursing staff than where rooms are along a corridor. Purpose We took advantage of the design of our hospital, with three quarters of rooms in a radial layout and the remainder located on corridors to compare falls surveillance and outcomes between patients in a radial room and those in a corridor room. Methods This is a retrospective observational study of falls occurring using anonymized data from fall incident reports. Results There were 166 falls over the 15-month study period, 124 among patients in radial rooms and 42 in patients in corridor rooms. Fallers in the radial location beds were significantly older, more likely to be women and had a higher baseline falls risk. The falls/1000 bed days were 3.7 (95% CI 2.6–5.1) in the radial and 3.4 (95% CI 2.4–4.8) in the corridor areas ( P = 0.73). Falls in radial room patients were more likely to be witnessed than in corridor room patients (27 (21.8%) versus 3 (7.1%); odds ratio (OR) 3.6 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.0–12.6), P = 0.04). There was no significant difference between injury rates for fallers in the radial rooms (24 (19.4%)) and in the corridor rooms (11 (26.2%)) ( P = −0.34). Conclusion A radial configuration of beds around the nursing station improves falls surveillance with a significantly higher proportion of witnessed falls compared with when rooms are arranged along a corridor.