---
name: fall-risk-assessment
description: Use when asked to administer, score, or explain a Fall Risk Assessment — using the Morse Fall Scale (MFS) — grounded in FormExamples/form-examples; related to mobility-assessment.
---

# 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](https://github.com/FormExamples/form-examples/tree/main/forms/fall-risk-assessment) for the full implementation, clinical references, and worked examples.
- [[mobility-assessment]] for the related, more detailed balance/gait assessment.