Are any hospitals using the yellow gowns for fall prevention? Is there any solid, objective evidence that yellow gowns, en masse, will actually prevent falls, or is this another bandaid solution to avoid dealing with the real problem, understaffing?
Call me a cynic, but I suspect the latter. After 10 years the regulators will be implementing a campaign to reduce "gown fatigue", saying that nurses ignore the gowns since so many patients have then.
Isn't the elephant in the room here that the solution is actually more nurses and CNAs?
Well, naturally ventilated, comatose patients meet fall risk criteria, per the fall risk check list. They are too confused to even open their eyes, or breathe!
Of all the problems with my crazy job, I never once thought, "You know what would enhance my patient's safety... yellow gowns." This knowledge is beyond my comprehension. I would've stupidly asked for more nurses and support staff, better equipment, competent management, or less mandatory overtime.
We use yellow socks, which apparently bestow some sort of anti-gravity properties to patients so they don't fall. I started noticing that every patient I saw in the cafeteria had yellow socks on, and were clearly not a fall risk. I brought a patient up from the ER to a floor and went to put socks on them and could only find yellow ones stocked, a nurse told me that's all they are allowed to put on all of their patients. Brilliant.
Our yellow socks are one size fits all, and they are sized for very, very large people. Patients are always tripping on them because they won't stay in place. But we will get in trouble if our fall risk patients are not wearing their yellow socks. I wish I made this stuff up,
Lol not gonna lie about it, when I first read that I envisioned patients running around in those yellow contamination gowns and I was wondering to myself how in the world them wearing that was going to prevent them from falling.
We had our confused mobile patient wear yellow. It helped a lot.
Really? What type of facility do you work in and how specifically do you feel they have helped? Has anyone at your facility looked at the data on falls and found any objective evidence of success?
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Emergent, RN
4,303 Posts
Well, naturally ventilated, comatose patients meet fall risk criteria, per the fall risk check list. They are too confused to even open their eyes, or breathe!