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.

Health-related quality of life in cancer patients between baseline and a three-year follow-up.

PURPOSE: The aim of the study was to identify health-related quality of life (QOL) in persons diagnosed with cancer and to determine differences between the QOL over a 3-year period. METHODS: We investigated the QOL in cancer patients at baseline and 3 years later using the EORTC QLQ-C30 (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30) and the ECOG (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group) Performance Status. Initially 216 participants (85 women, 131 men) were enrolled, and at the 3-year follow-up there were 126 (52 women, 74 men). RESULTS: Scores on the function and symptom scales changed significantly between the baseline and the 3-year follow-up. Physical, role, and social functions improved, whereas problems with constipation worsened. The global QOL of the participants at the 3-year follow-up was lower than that of baseline, but it was not statistically significant. The QOL in cancer patients improved from the baseline to the 3-year follow-up. CONCLUSION: The results could serve as a guideline for nurses interpreting the perspective of QOL in their own groups of patients, and improve the understanding of the significance of mean QOL scores and develop nursing interventions in the future.