Fall predictors in hospitalized patients living with cancer: a case-control study.

PURPOSE: To identify fall predictors and develop an assessment tool to be used for screening hospitalized cancer patients at risk for fall. METHODS: A retrospective case-control study was conducted in 2018 at a cancer center in Northern Italy. The study participants were 448 adult cancer patients admitted to the oncology ward from 2009 to 2013. The case group consisted of 112 patients presenting at least one fall, while controls were randomly chosen by matching each case for age, sex, and admission period with three patients who did not fall. Data for the fall predictors were extracted from the electronic medical records. Conditional logistic regression was used to evaluate the association between patient's characteristics and fall risk. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of patients having at least one candidate fall predictor was high (98%). Seven of the studied variables showed an independent association with fall risk at multivariate analysis. These were tumor site, the presence of neurologic diseases, gait imbalance disorders, fatigue, and the assumption of certain medications such as diuretics, hypnotics, and opioids (odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals in brackets were 3.78 (1.78-8.13), 2.26 (1.08-4.77), 4.22 (1.87-9.52), 2.76 (1.45-5.26), 2.66 (1.52-4.66), 2.41 (1.20-4.85), and 3.03 (1.68-5.45), respectively). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we identified falling risk factors in an Italian population of hospitalized cancer patients and developed a new risk assessment tool. An external validation is necessary before implementing our screening tool in clinical practice.

Italian Validation of the Chiba Interprofessional Competency Scale (CICS29).

BACKGROUND AND AIM OF THE WORK: The Chiba Inter-professional Competency Scale (CICS29) validated in several languages, it is a self-report instrument that investigates the degree of interprofessional collaboration in six areas: attitudes and beliefs of the professional; ability to manage a work group; actions to achieve goals; providing assistance that respects the patient; attitudes and behaviours that improve the cohesion of the working group; fulfilling or performing the own professional role. In addition to being recent, the scale investigates collaboration among all health professionals, and is not limited to specific professionals. The aim of the study was to validate the Italian version of CICS29. METHOD: A questionnaire-based study was conducted with an Italian sample consisting of 530 health professionals (419 women¸ mean age = 40 years, SD = 10.7; range 23- 58 years). The internal validity was measured using factor analysis. To verify the convergent validity, the Italian Version of Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Survey (ICCAS) was correlated with the CICS29; Results: The reliability and the internal validity of the CICS29 revealed 6 factors corresponding to the original subscales. The analysis presents an excellent sample adequacy measure (KMO = .933) with the scores ranging from 0.62 to 0.78 for the interclass correlation coefficients of the 6 domains. A significant level of correlation was found between the subscales of the CICS29 and the ICCAS. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, the Italian version of CICS29 has a satisfactory level of reliability and validity and it is recommended for measuring interprofessional collaboration of the health professionals. (www.actabiomedica.it).