Clinical practice guidelines to prevent hospital falls: protocol for a systematic review

BackgroundHospital falls are a major global problem responsible for considerable morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. Clinical practice guidelines for hospital falls prevention, facilitate the implementation of falls prevention research into practice, through the provision of evidence-based recommendations to mitigate the risk of falls. The review aims to identify, synthesise, appraise, and compare published clinical practice guidelines on hospital falls prevention. Methods and analysisThe databases of MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, Cochrane CENTRAL, PEDro, Web of Science, Infobase of Clinical Practice Guidelines, and Epistemonikos will be searched for clinical practice guidelines published between 1993 and 2023. The quality of the guidelines will be evaluated using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation Global Rating Scale and Recommendation EXcellence tools. A thematic synthesis will be performed on the content of the included clinical practice guidelines. The synthesis findings will be graded using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation Confidence in Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative Research approach. Ethics and disseminationEthics approval is not required for the review. The review will be submitted for publication to a peer-reviewed journal.