Fall Risk Assessment

Fall risk evaluation using the Morse Fall Scale (MFS), with comprehensive environmental, medication, mobility, cognitive, and sensory assessments for fall prevention planning.

Scoring

Instrument: Morse Fall Scale. Range 0–125.

• Low Risk — 0–24.
• Moderate Risk — 25–44.
• High Risk — ≥ 45.
• Critical — recurrent falls with injury, anticoagulated patient, or MFS ≥ 75.

What it covers

Demographics; fall history; the Morse Fall Scale items; mobility and gait assessment; medication review; vision and sensory assessment; environmental assessment; cognitive assessment; previous interventions; and a fall-prevention plan.

Relationship to mobility-assessment

This assessment scores overall fall risk (MFS) across multiple contributing domains; Mobility Assessment specifically evaluates balance and gait in depth (Tinetti tool). A high Morse score often warrants the more detailed Tinetti-based mobility assessment as a follow-up.

Common pitfalls

• Treating a low MFS as removing the need for basic fall precautions — the MFS identifies relative risk level for prioritizing intervention intensity, but universal fall-precaution basics (clear pathways, appropriate footwear) still apply broadly.
• Not repeating the assessment after a status change — fall risk changes with new medications, an acute illness, or a change in mobility; a stale score doesn't reflect current risk.
• Anticoagulation not flagged as an independent escalation factor — the critical-risk category explicitly calls out anticoagulated patients, since a fall carries disproportionate bleeding-risk consequences regardless of the base MFS score.

Learn more

• FormExamples: fall-risk-assessment for the full implementation, clinical references, and worked examples.
• Mobility Assessment for the related, more detailed balance/gait assessment.