Bed and Chair Alarms in a Short-Term Care Facility
The nursing problem
The short-term care facility registers a rather increased rate of falls among its patients, from both beds as well as chairs. In some of these cases, the injuries associated with the falls are rather severe, and in a small percentage, they are even fatal. The nursing staffs seek to prevent patient falls from occurring, but being understaffed and working in a demanding environment, guarding each patient at all times is virtually impossible.
A longitudinal analysis of the patient falls in the short-term care facility has revealed that the problem is a rather constant one, without major fluctuations having been observed in the falls registered by patients from beds and chairs. In order to address the matter, a solution is proposed in that of integrating alarms in the bed and chairs used by the patients at the short-term care facility. The beds and chairs would, as such, contain built in sensors to alert the nursing staffs when a patient is at risk of falling. The mechanism by which the alarm would alert the staffs of falling risks is that the sensors would be able to identify when the patient changes the weight pressure in the chair and the bed, by moving in manners which endanger their safety and stability within the bed and the chair. By assessing the patient movements then, the sensors would alert...
Bed and chair alarms are typically pressure sensitive devices placed in beds, chair pads and wheelchair seats that respond to changes in pressure with a warning signal" (Horowitz, 2014).
Barriers to implementation
The theory of using bed and chair alarms within the short care facility is sustained by the science of the pressure points which could alert when falling risks occur. Besides this sound argument however, there are numerous counter-arguments to implementing the personal alarms. Some of the most relevant of these barriers to bed and chair alarm implementation include:
The patients exhibit higher levels of distress and anxiety when they are being constantly monitored
The usage of the alarms implies additional costs as well as new operations within the care facility, which will produce disturbances in operations and patient care
In order for the nurses to be able to prevent the fall once this is alerted, they need to be in the immediate proximity of the patient, otherwise, they will, at most, be altered that someone has fallen and will then provide after-the-fact assistance
It is…
