This is an example of restraints gone wrong and poor observation on the nurses part
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...1n30sharp.html Taken from article........... Jeffrey Christopher, 25, of Bonsall was playing cards with his mother on April 11 and became agitated when visiting hours ended at the hospital's psychiatric unit. Christopher had a history of becoming unsettled and then falling to his knees, resulting in wounds to his knees and feet. The unit's workers took Christopher to his room and had him lie down on his stomach. They secured him to his bed with restraints at the wrists, ankles and waist, keeping his head and neck above the mattress. They also gave him several medications for his schizophrenia, including ativan and thorazine. Although nurses continuously monitored Christopher, they did from a chair facing his feet instead of following the standard practice of checking a patient's face. One nurse assigned to his room said she saw him “scoot and wiggle himself lower onto the bed until his face was on the mattress,” according to a report by the county's medical examiner, who conducted an autopsy on Christopher. “He then began violently hitting his face against the mattress and metal frame of the bed,” and held his breath, the medical examiner's report said. During a staffing rotation, another nurse entered the room and saw that Christopher had turned blue. The Medicare report said a nurse tried to resuscitate Christopher, but did not follow American Heart Association guidelines because he had not been trained adequately. Christopher died that night. At least one-quarter of the federal report, which did not mention Christopher by name, is devoted to chronicling the series of errors that resulted in his death. “The staff did not intervene by repositioning the patient onto his back so that he would be unable to bury his face in the mattress,” it said. Gross and Tarbet, the Sharp executives, said a licensed vocational nurse who was watching Christopher didn't notice that he had suffocated. “The (nurse) assumed that since the patient had been sedated, he was resting quietly,” Tarbet said. ............................ I worked in a Nursing Home 22yrs ago on a youth training scheme in Scotland, and they would use bandages to restrain the residents with dementia to their chair in isolation in their room. When the authorities did checks, we had to sit with the patient and as soon as the y left we had to put the restraints back on. I was only there for 3 months, i 'm not sure if they had the whistle blowing proceedure back then and now i really which i had complained.
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Re: restraints in acute care
