This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA.
Many of the patients we take care of need extra help staying safe during their hospitalization. For patients who are elderly, have dementia, or are confused as a result of their illness or injury, the hospital can be a scary and disorienting place. They may try to get out of bed without help, or interfere with medical equipment such as IV lines.
Patients with these needs should be assigned a “sitter,” a nurse’s assistant who sits with the patient to gently remind them to stay in bed, to keep their medical devices intact, and to help them with their bathroom needs. Although this support is critical to patient safety, management is making it harder for nurses to request sitters for their patients.
To avoid the extra cost associated with a sitter, management prefers nurses use restraints or sedative medications to keep the patients in bed. More and more paperwork is required for sitter requests, and nurses must state that every alternative has been tried, such as cameras and alarms, before getting a sitter. Even a doctor’s order for a sitter can be overridden if management doesn’t want to pay the cost.
Sitters are clearly the most compassionate option for keeping our vulnerable patients safe, and the one we would choose for our loved ones in the hospital. Management needs to let nurses take care of their patients and stop fighting us when we request a sitter.
Click here to read the article printed in the 04-23-25 Healthcare Newsletter
