Bed and chair alarms for reducing patient falls in short-term care facilities

Bed Alarms and Chair Alarms to Reduce Patients' Falls in A Short-Term Care Facility

Importance of bed alarms and chair alarms

Bed alarms have been taunted as not useful in the modern day healthcare deliveries. Nonetheless, the significance of these facilities always strikes much admiration from different healthcare facilities. Alarms are important as warning gadgets that every section of an organization should consider in its ranks. Hazard preparedness requires that all possible strategies adopted to ensure that there is safety for all the people, and even the property being used within a healthcare facility (Vincent, 2010). Thus, the bed and chair alarms are just material things that have been used to provide avenues for the protection of human health, minimizing and eventually stopping the occurrences of cases like patient fall and strain at the health facilities. In the modern hospitals, communication within and without the healthcare facilities between the patients and the healthcare personnel. Alarms fixed on the bed and some on the chairs used by patients are imperative in boosting communication between the patients and the healthcare providers within the organization (Vincent, 2010). Moreover, healthcare provision includes some undertakings that ensure there is the equitable protection of the interests of the patients while in and out of the hospitals. Patients falling because they have not alerted for assistance as they attempt to make moves is considered as a challenge in many healthcare facilities in the world today. As such, the program to install bed alarms and chair alarms was to have a more protective measure that will reduce patient accidents and increase their safety while making movements within the facility. Moreover, these facilities are used to raise concerns in the case that the patients need attention.

Importance of this problem to nursing

Nursing borrows from many fields to maximize on its deliveries. Nurses must understand the use of as such facilities as possible because problems like this of bed and chair alarms can become a great lesson for improvement. The issues surrounding the use of bed and chair alarms are significant to the nurse fraternity. Nurses can afford possible and practical ways of monitoring their patients while at the hospital. Moreover, nurses can create possible avenues through which they can cater for almost all the needs of the patients while in and out of the health facilities. Nursing requirements and ethics are geared towards protection of life where possible, and hence, the lessons from the use of the bed and chair alarms will sum up the need to increase chances of deaths not to occur among patients (Vernikos, 2011).

Current state of this problem in the healthcare

The problem with the use of bed and chair alarms is still at a standstill in many situations and places globally. Many health institutions have not yet realized and invested on this project because of the divided attentions and perceptions in these facilities. For instance, many healthcare facilities are in possession of these facilities. Nonetheless, many of the healthcare nurses and specialists do not have a direct expertise and skill to make use of them. There is a little follow-up to the use of these facilities even when they have been mounted everywhere within institutions. It is likened to fire extinguishers where many of the people working within the institutions have never used and have never experienced how and the usage of them. Cases of patient accidents and falling are rampant even with the presence of these facilities (Vincent, 2010).

Scope of the problem

Using bed and chair alarms has been a major issue being implemented in many nursing and health institutions today. There has been a global problem for patients falling and straining while at health facilities getting medical attention (Vernikos, 2011). As with the use of wheelchairs, the use of chair alarms, for instance, would help to reduce cases of patients falling in an attempt to make moves while there is no health care attendant in place. Moreover, the alarms are thought to aid in the control of patient straining in an attempt to make minimal movements while on the hospital bed. It is a global happening, and not only found within certain areas of health care deliveries. Globally, the use of these alarms has raised issues with some researchers thinking and proposing that the strategy does not reduce patient accidents and injuries. However, others advocate for a better use of them as they are of great assistance in controlling patient vulnerabilities in health care facilities (Vincent, 2010).