Reducing Slips, Trips and Falls in Hospitals

Year Submitted: 2025
Published Date: 11 December 2025

Tags: Care Process ＆ Redesign, Design Thinking, Quality Improvement, Facilities Management Improvements, Build Environment, Applied/Translational Research, Qualitative Research, Care Continuum, Inpatient Care, Organisational Leadership, Human Resource, Staff Wellbeing

About this Content

Aims

To understand the causes of slips, trips, and falls (STF) by staff and develop interventions to reduce STF incidents by staff in hospitals.

Background

STF incidents represent a significant workplace safety challenge within Singapore's healthcare industry. According to a 2023 national report, STFs in the healthcare industry, was the leading cause of both major and minor workplace injuries and accounted for significant man-days lost.

The NHG Centre for Healthcare Innovation (CHI) collaborated with the Workplace Safety and Health Council (WSH Council) Healthcare Committee to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the underlying causes of STF incidents and to explore viable solutions that could effectively reduce their occurrence in hospitals.

Methods

CHI used the design thinking approach to first understand the key drivers of STFs, by analysing past incidents data across 7 hospitals and interviewing their workplace safety and health representatives. We then ran a co-creation workshop with key representatives from the healthcare sector, including WSH representatives and other hospital staff (e.g. nurse, physiotherapist, facility managers). Through the workshop, participants ideated and prototyped interventions that addressed key drivers of STFs. These interventions were then presented back to the WSH Council Healthcare Committee, which includes representatives from various hospitals. These representatives were then asked to take these proposed interventions back to their organisations for further development and testing.

Results

This project developed 4 interventions, which targets drivers of STFs from across the broad safety management process steps mitigate, investigate and report, rectify and reinforce.

Conclusion

This project has demonstrated that while STFs in hospitals are often sporadic and difficult to attribute to a single root cause, meaningful progress can be achieved through targeted interventions and co-creation with stakeholders. By leveraging design thinking, the team ideated and prototyped four interventions that address key drivers of STFs across the safety management processmitigation, investigation and reporting, rectification, and reinforcement. The findings highlight that existing policies and systems, though robust, still offer opportunities for enhancement. The collaborative approach adopted in this project sets a strong foundation for future initiatives aimed at workplace safety in the healthcare sector.

Lessons Learnt

A key lesson from this project is that effective ideation for workplace safety interventions requires active collaboration with end users (i.e. healthcare professionals). By engaging hospital staff and workplace safety representatives in co-creation workshops, the team was able to surface practical insights and prototype solutions that directly address the realities faced by those on the ground. Involving users not only enriches the ideation process with diverse perspectives, but also ensures that proposed interventions are relevant, feasible, and more likely to be adopted. This collaborative approach fosters ownership and buy-in, making it possible to design interventions that truly meet the needs of staff and drive meaningful change in hospital safety practices.

Keywords

Workplace safety Design Thinking Qualitive research Slip trips falls incident reporting

Innovators' Details

Connect with this contributor!

Keith Lee - keith.jx.lee@nhghealth.com.sg

Project Attachment

WSHCxCHI_STFs.pdf