discontinuing pressure alarms

[sls73]

I am trying to discontinue pressure alarms in our facility. I am having a hard time getting the staff to buy into this concept despite the fact that pressure alarms do not prevent falls. Has anyone else discontinued pressure alarms? If so how did you get staff buy in and how did you implement this?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[mzdebi]

That was my thoughts as well. I gave notice last night. I refuse to work for a place that does not take every measure available to protect the residents. They must come first. Everything I found on the subject said it is facility preference.

[mzdebi]

This same resident fell again. The same day as her third fall in a week, so now make that four falls. All with no alarm.

[PammyRN,CEN]

I am in the process of removing alarms from our list of fall interventions. As they don't really prevent falls but alert us to the unassisted ambulation attempt. I am just reviewing first the ones that haven't fallen in the recent past and even for those who have..obviously this intervention is not effective. IMHO it seems to confuse the resident even more.

[CompleteUnknown]

I agree with this statement. The alarms I am used to are sensor alarms...pressure relieved..alarm goes off. There was a time when we had many, many residents on alarms and I can't begin to count the times I witnessed staff walk right on by and honestly didn't seem to even hear them. Desensitized to the max. (It is a pretty cool idea tho to have it run thru the call light system but I'm not ever going to get that approved thru the budget).

We took several off and tried some different interventions, ie: transfer poles (think stripper poles), therapy, dycem on the floor, more activity involvement - including things to do in the middle of the night at the nurses station, low beds w/ mats etc. Can't really say that we have seen an increase in falls as a result.

Just wanted to say that things are quite low tech where I work - we have the old fashioned buzzers that plug into the wall and the sensor mats just plug into the same place. We have a sort of double adapter arrangement so that the resident still has a buzzer. It isn't expensive at all, but I don't know what kind of nurse call system you have. The sensor mats are just like the call buzzer in that way - when a resident rings the buzzer it doesn't make any sound in the room or hallway, and there's no noise when the resident steps on the sensor mat either - it goes straight to the nurse call system. I'd hate to work with loud alarms going off constantly like most of you are describing, it must be really disruptive to everybody. How do the residents get any sleep?

[noc4senuf]

Alarms are considered a restraint if the resident does not move for the rear of the alarm going off.... can be cited for this.