Guidance
This guideline covers assessment of fall risk and interventions to prevent falls in people aged 65 and over. It aims to reduce the risk and incidence of falls and the associated distress, pain, injury, loss of confidence, loss of independence and mortality.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- multifactorial risk assessment of older people who present for medical attention because of a fall, or report recurrent falls in the past year
- multifactorial interventions to prevent falls in older people who live in the community
- multifactorial risk assessment of older peoples’ risk of falling during a hospital stay
- multifactorial interventions to prevent falls in inpatients at risk of falling
Who is it for?
- Healthcare and other professionals and staff who care for older people who are at risk of falling
- People aged 65 or older who fall or are at risk of falling in the community, and their families and carers
- All hospital inpatients aged 65 or older
- Hospital inpatients aged 50 to 64 who have been identified as being at higher risk of falling
Is this guideline up to date?
May 2019: We have checked this guideline and are updating it. For more information, see the surveillance decision. See the guideline in development page for progress on the update.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline updates and replaces NICE guideline CG21 (November 2004).
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.