Restraining a patient. What can I do?

I went to the meeting with the administrator and thanks god everything went well, I didn’t get written up and didn’t get a disciplinary action, instead explained to me that this is consider a very serious crime by the state and that the nursing home can be penalized and I can lose my job and also my license. I’m so glad.

I would take this up with your director of nursing. That way whatever she says, you need to follow and won't get in trouble.

What happens to you will depend on the disciplinary policies of your employer, if this is a first offence then hopefully nothing more than a note in your employment record and a reminder of proper procedures. Being proactive and reading up on the definition of inappropriate restraints wouldn't be a bad idea.

What you did seems logical and well-intended to me. But there are specific rules about patient restraint that aren't always intuitive or based on logic. Have you been given any training about this in the one year you've been there?

Is the nurse who finally responded going to report you?

Lanana I wish you the best of luck and I hope your employers will make sure you get the training you need and deserve.

It's very unfair that you were placed in that position and then made to feel at fault for doing your best.

When Mom was/is going through her periodic episodes of hallucinating and trying to get out of her wheelchair and would fall, I would have hugged and thanked you for restraining her! I couldn’t even get them to install a magnetic alarm because that was considered a restraint! I’m sorry you got in trouble for trying to do what you considered a safe response, but I agree that you should find out what the standard procedure should be in your facility. If the resident was popping up and then sitting back down in his chair, the alarm, though annoying, may have been having the desired effect of having him sit. Have you had documented training in their procedures?

Thank you very much for your answers, they had schedule some in-services about that stuff but I have never been in one, I have a small baby at home so I can only work every other weekend. And yes the nurse did reported me to the director of nursing and she called me to confirm that I did restrain the patient, my answer to her was that I did it because he was going to fall and there was nobody around to watch him, I didn’t do it with the purpose of shutting up the alarm, i was trying to prevent him from falling. So today I have a meeting with the administrator and will keep you guys posted. Thank you for the answers.

As the wife of a person with dementia, I would have preferred that my husband be restrained temporarily instead of falling. Unfortunately, the LAW doesn't agree with me, and doesn't let you use your judgement to decide what's prudent. Please don't let this incident upset you. You sound like a caring person and I'm glad that your record will remain clean.

Lanana so glad you were not disciplined for something you have never been trained on. I hope during your meeting the procedure they want you to use in the future was communicated to you.

I’m with you miss jjariz, the laws are very wrong when it comes to nursing homes, there are so many procedures and rules that I don’t really agree with, I guess they prefer someone to fall instead of being restrained, like I kind of understand where they are coming from, with that patient for ex. The administrator explained to me that because he is confused the restrain could’ve agitated him and he could’ve fallen with the chair and wouldn’t be a able to get up or the chair might hurt him too. But I did have another patient that had dementia, he used to have seatbelt on his chair and alarms on his bed, oh well, the therapy people said it wasn’t necessary and they removed all alarms from the room, making the story short a week later the patient died from falling out of his bed. And just like him many other residents have died from falling. Unfortunately they don’t see it from the same point of view that we do.