Bed alarms
A bed alarm combines with a bed sensor or bed pad and operates through detecting a reduction of pressure when patients get out of bed. Bed alarms, in essence, will alert the unit when pressure is removed from the sensor. Introduction of bed sensor alarms has made the fall prevention of patients and elderly people to be easily accessible and uncomplicated.
How to use a bed alarm
Setting the alarm
- The Status Light blinks silently when the monitor is in use and pressure is on the bed.
- When pressure is removed the monitor will alarm and the Reset Button blinks.
- An alarming monitor can only be reset by the caregiver with the Caregiver Key.
- If signal between the pad and the monitor are interrupted the Check Pad Light blinks and the monitor beeps.
- Before the patient gets into bed you have to set the alarm in default form.
- Hold on the button to confirm that it is indeed zeroed out. Make sure you are setting up while still the sheets and other linens are on the bed since the patient may get out of bed and the alarm may not sense that the patient is still there because of the additional weight of the linens.
- Many alarms have different settings, you can set the alarm to go off when the patient goes to the edge of the bed or when the patient gets out of the bed. The patient has to get in bed in order to activate the alarm.
- According to the settings of the alarm, when the caregiver finds out that the alarm is off if it was set to be off when the patient is out of bed or on if it was set to be on when the patient is out of bed, he/she should rush to the patients bed to avoid further accidents happening to the patient.
Do alarms reduce fall in the elderly population
Bed alarms alone are relatively useless as an intervention. For alarms to be effective they must be part of a much more care for people who have dangers of falling. There is no particular thing that can reduce fall rates, fall rates are reduced by different activities to approach the well-being of a person by clear focus on staff by keeping residents safe. While using the alarms, staff settle that they work and also do not work. This can be a burden to caregivers of the patients. Overall it seems that alarm use can contribute in care and safety of nursing facility residents. When used as a piece of a widespread care plan, they can be quite effective devices in ensuring people’s safety.
