Nursing Homes Abuse Blog - Many Nursing Homes & Assisted Living Facilities Continue To Threaten The Safety Of Their Patients With The Use Of Bed Rails In Their Facilities - Comments http://www.nursinghomesabuseblog.com/ Jonathan Rosenfeld's Nursing Homes Abuse Blog : Jonathan Rosenfeld's Nursing Homes Abuse Blog | Lawyer & Attorney : Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers | Bed Sores, Senior Neglect, Elder Abuse, Sexual Abuse: Chicago, Illinois en Copyright 2011 Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:56:05 -0600 Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:56:05 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.32-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss David Brown Warnings about the dangers of bed rails for cognitively impaired elderly patients tend to be alarmist and oversimplified. My 85 y/o father, who suffers from dementia and Parkinson's disease, recently fell and broke his hip. Following a partial hip replacement, he was released to a skilled nursing facility for what little rehab might be possible. When I noted my alarm that there were no bed rails on the bed, the staff explained that they don't use them anymore because of the potential for injury and abuse as a restraint. They said they would use a bed alarm instead. I voiced my skepticism that an alarm would be sufficient but went along with it. In the past 3 days my father has fallen to the floor 4 times while trying to get out of bed. He is not agile or strong enough to hoist himself over a bed rail but has just enough strength to swing his legs out the bed. The need for bed rails in his case seems obvious and the generalization of safety concerns from individual cases to the entire population of patients is just another example of simpleminded bureaucratic overprotection.

]]> http://www.nursinghomesabuseblog.com/bedrail-injury/many-nursing-homes-assisted-living-facilities-continue-to-threaten-the-safety-of-their-patients-with-the-use-of-bed-rails-in-their-facilities/#37715 http://www.nursinghomesabuseblog.com/bedrail-injury/many-nursing-homes-assisted-living-facilities-continue-to-threaten-the-safety-of-their-patients-with-the-use-of-bed-rails-in-their-facilities/#37715 Bed Rail Injury Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:41:52 -0600 Jonathan Rosenfeld Jonathan Rosenfeld Good point. Indeed there are some circumstances where the use of bed rails are necessary to protect the patient from harm. Depending on the facility, sometimes doctor's orders are necessary for the facility to implement bed rails. Also, some facilities have specialized beds that can be lowered substantially to reduce the chance of injury to the patient.

Best regards,

Jonathan

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and make it a requirment that bedrails be sold with bolster cushions all around the boarder
of the beds as you do with a baby..???....I find this absolutly horrifying that the
elderly have to be put at risk for "falling" just to prevent homes saving money on
proper bedding equipment..How can this be o.k..??.Where is the "humanity" in our society..??..
I'm embarressed to say our laws for the elderly are anything but "human"...

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