Personal Alarms...what are they really doing?

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Personal Alarms...the new physical restraint! I work in a 12-bed special care dementia community at a CCRC. About six months ago, we began to notice an increase in agitation, administration of antipsychotics, antianxiety meds, and negative behaviors in our dementia residents. So we began the process of eliminating personal alarms to see what effect it had on our residents. We started with the 5 residents that had the personal alarms and if they had not had a fall in the last sixty days, we removed the alarms. That brought us down to two residents with remaining alarms. Ths staff organized their care schedule in order to allow them to recognize the patterens of each individual resident, and increase their supervision of the resident during high risk times of falls, agitation, and negative behaviors. What we found was that the residents were less agitated, use of antianxiety meds, antipsychotics, and negative behaviors all decreased. Participation in activities and meals increased for some. Have any of you implemented this process in your communities, and what experiences, advice, questions, or suggestions do you have?

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