Exploring the relationship between AM-PAC scores and mobility components in falls and pressure injury risk assessment tools: A pathway to improve nursing clinical efficiency

Background: Nurses routinely perform multiple risk assessments related to patient mobility in the hospital. Use of a single mobility assessment for multiple risk assessment tools could improve clinical documentation efficiency, accuracy and lay the groundwork for automated risk evaluation tools.

Purpose: We tested how accurately Activity Measure for Post-Acute Care (AM-PAC) mobility scores predicted the mobility components of various fall and pressure injury risk assessment tools.

Method: AM-PAC scores along with mobility and physical activity components on risk assessments (Braden Scale, Get Up and Go used within the Hendrich II Fall Risk Model®, Johns Hopkins Fall Risk Assessment Tool (JHFRAT) and Morse Fall Scale) were collected on a cohort of hospitalised patients. We predicted scores of risk assessments based on AM-PAC scores by fitting of ordinal logistic regressions between AM-PAC scores and risk assessments. STROBE checklist was used to report the present study.

Findings: AM-PAC scores predicted the observed mobility components of Braden, Get Up and Go and JHFRAT with high accuracy (≥85%), but with lower accuracy for the Morse Fall Scale (40%).

Discussion: These findings suggest that a single mobility assessment has the potential to be a good solution for the mobility components of several fall and pressure injury risk assessments.