blood pressure

I work in a nursing home and always have more that can be done, I have heard it said that one can I take a blood pressure without a machine or cuff? it that true.

How? If no BP cuff you cannot obtain a BP. In field EMS you can estimate, sort of, for rapid triage if a patient has a radial pulse their BP is at least 80 systolic, femoral and brachial but no radial at least 70 systolic. Carotid only at least 60 systolic. But this is only for rapid triage purposes only as in who is red tagged in a multi patient scene, who is yellow tagged, who is black tagged (morgue)...

Other than that it would be a random guess and not appropriate

I work in a nursing home and always have more that can be done, I have heard it said that one can I take a blood pressure without a machine or cuff? it that true.

Probably a joke by someone who pulls numbers out of their... um... whenever they're too lazy to actually take the BP.

Unless they are referring to one of those wrist BP machines...granted that is still a machine. Never thought they were too accurate however (just my opinion). Not seeing how else you could get an accurate BP without a cuff/machine...

JustBeachy has it right, that is the only non-machine way to estimate. If someone says there is another way they are probably inventing the numbers rather than taking an actual blood pressure.