Potential Risks of Bed Rails Include: Patient or Family Concerns:
• Strangling, suffocating, bodily injury or death when If Patients/residents or family ask about bed rails, the person or part of their body are caught between health care providers should: rails or between the bed rails and mattress. • Encourage patients/residents or family to talk to their • More serious injuries from falls when patients/ health care planning team to determine whether or residents climb over rails. not bed rails are indicated. • Skin bruising, cuts, and scrapes. • Reassure patients/residents and their families that • Inducing agitated behavior when bed rails are used in many cases the patient/resident can sleep safely as a restraint. without bed rails. • Feeling isolated or unnecessarily restricted. • Reassess the need for using bed rails on a frequent, • Preventing patients/residents, who are able to get regular basis. out of bed, from performing routine activities such as going to the bathroom or retrieving something from a closet.
Meeting Patiens’s Needs for Safety:
• Most patients/residents can be in bed safely without bed rails. • Use beds that can be raised and lowered close to the floor to accommodate both patient/resident and health care worker’s needs. • Keep the bed in the lowest position with wheels locked. • When the patient/resident is at risk of falling out of bed, place mats next to the bed, as long as this does not create a greater risk of accident. • Use transfer or mobility aids. • Monitor patients/residents frequently. • Anticipate the reasons patients/ residents get out of bed such as hunger, thirst, going to the bathroom, restlessness and pain, meet these needs by offering food and fluids, scheduling ample toileting, and providing calming interventions and pain relief.
ACCA’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program advocates for the rights of nursing home and personal care home residents, provides educational opportunities, and investigates and resolves complaints in long-term care facilities. Our singular focus is to protect the rights of residents in long-term care facility.
Which Ways of Reducing Risk are Best? A process that requires ongoing patient evaluation and monitoring will result in optimizing bed safety. Many patients/residents go through a period of adjustment to become comfortable with new options. Patients and their families should talk to their health care team to find out which options are best for them. FALL 2014 21