Emergency Department Restraint Safety

Restraint use during patient care is a serious and important safety topic because it is often utilized in high stress, rapidly evolving, and unique situations in which patients not only pose harm to themselves, but harm to others. The scope of patient safety topic is a threefold approach: initiation, maintenance, and discontinuation. First, a briefly literature pertaining to evidence-based criteria for the initiation of patient restraints will be constructed. Secondly, restraint types and the resources required to maintain restraints will be explicated. Finally, the chapter will conclude with patient evaluation methods pertaining to the safe discontinuation of restraints and resource de-escalation. A succinct, pragmatic discussion on restraint utilization - a method that mitigates a patient’s threat to themselves and others – will be presented in this manuscript.