Posey bar problem

Published Sep 5, 2014

1 Post

Hi, All:I'm really new here, got my activation ID only a few seconds ago.

I was brought here after Googling "posey vest" + strangle ( without quotes) I have never seen a "posey vest", but my current PT has read( maybe here) about a strangulation of a patient by a Posey vest. But Posey makes a whole line of things they call "Patient protection devices" i.e. restraints.

My experience(( years ago( as a new stroke survivor was with a Posey-bar{ a device that slips through the side panels of a wheelchair( intended to prevent patients from slipping off the seat and onto the floor)} . I had done just that, when my case manager(an RN) decided I needed a Posey bar. The Posey bar sat across my lap and did not keep me from slipping off the seat( later an OT put a ciece of Disum(sp?) on my seat, which did solve the slipping problem. But the posey bar only caught me under my rib cage( a painful way to be suspended, but better than the alternative{ There I was with my backpartly on the seat. (my butt having slid off into space) and my working leg trying to push myself back onto the seat (, If my rib cage had not been caught, and if I had slipped just a bit farther, I bight have been caught under my chin and either strangled or had my neck broken.

In the mind of the case manager this event confirmed the need for the Posey bar (she gave me a lecture that such attempts to escape were pointless( since she had many more comprehensive restraints. {up to having a doctor prescribe a "powerful sedative that would keep me in bed for days"and would not hesitate to apply them.

The Posey bar comes in two parts( each slipping through one side panel and joining together over the patient's lap( where they lock together with a cheap combination lock arrangement built into one of the pieces of the bar. Since the "combination lock" was crudely bade of cheap materials. I figured that I could pick the lock, It took only a few minutes, but when the case manager saw that I had escaped she was furious! and repeated her lecture about how she would "win": in the end. In turn, I told her about how close te posey bar had come to killing me. Thus forewarned , (and with my warning having been heard by both my roommate and a passing therapist, the case manager realized that (A)I might be killed and (B) there were witnesses who could testify that she had been informed.

Nurses:You read about it here! So you also have been informed!

Cheers Joefishjrf