Quality Appraisal of Clinical Guidelines for Preventing of Falls in Hospitalized Elderly Using AGREE

Abstract

Objectives: Hospitalization of the elderly is a vulnerable period for them and they are in danger, one of the most important of which is falling. There are various clinical guidelines in the field of fall prevention, the usefulness of which is related to their quality and acceptance at the clinical environment. The purpose of study was to evaluate the methodological quality of selected clinical guidelines for fall prevention in hospitalized elderly. Material & Methods: A systematic search was conducted from 2009 to 2020 with the keywords of clinical guideline, falling, prevention, aged and hospitalization. Among the 351 clinical guidelines identified, 4 guidelines were selected based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria and by purposeful sampling method. The quality of the selected guidelines was evaluated by 5 experts independently with Appraisal of Guideline for Research and Evaluation version 2. To identify the quality of guidelines, scores were categorized as “strongly recommended” or “recommended with modifications”. Results: Three clinical guidelines were categorized as “highly recommended” and one guideline as “recommended with modifications”. Therefore, in order to reduce the risk of falls of the elderly hospitalized in hospitals, it is possible to adaptation and use all guidelines. The average overall scores of all 6 areas in the guidelines were from high to low as follows: 91.1 for “clarity of presentation”, 86.6 for “scope and purpose”, 83.6 for “stakeholder involvement” 72.08 for “editorial independence”, 71.14 for “rigor of development” and 66.66 for “applicability”. Conclusions: Evaluation of the methodological quality of clinical guidelines using AGREE tool is a fundamental step in their use in the practice. It is suggested that updating of existing clinical guidelines and future clinical guidelines use existing tools and methodologies during development to ensure their quality. © 2023, Negah Institute for Scientific Communication. All rights reserved.