Nursing Homes Cut Back on Restraints
By Kevin Freking, Associated Press
March 27, 2008
The use of physical restraints on nursing home patients declined nearly 40 percent nationally in recent years as the federal government, states and the nursing home industry placed greater emphasis on eliminating what once was a common practice.
Overall, about 5.9 percent of 1.5 million long-term patients were physically restrained repeatedly in 2006. That's a drop from 9.7 percent in 2002.
Physical restraints, such as bed rails or wheelchair belts, were once regarded as necessary to improve safety, to keep patients from falling or wandering off, but that mind-set has changed during the past two decades.
Mary Jean Koren, assistant vice president at The Commonwealth Fund, a research group, said that changes to federal law in 1987 made it illegal for nursing homes to use restraints to discipline residents or as a matter of convenience. The restraints can only be used for medical reasons, such as to prevent a resident from tearing out an IV. Until the change in law, restraints were standard procedure in many homes.
"We didn't know better," Koren said. "We didn't understand what it did to people both physically and psychologically.
"Those effects typically include depression, pressure sores and dehydration, she said. Research has also shown that restraints even increased the likelihood of injury as the restrained residents lost strength due to inactivity, making it harder for them to walk once they were allowed to move around.
Copyright Associated Press
Abridged
SOURCE: abcNews
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