Behold, the dangers of listening to the horseshit they put in the Washington Compost, and mistaking it for factual information:
This is easily solved.Falls remain the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries for older Americans. Hospitals face financial penalties when they occur. Nurses and aides get blamed or reprimanded if a patient under their supervision hits the ground.But hospitals have become so overzealous in fall prevention that they are producing an “epidemic of immobility,” experts say.
Waive all your rights to sue in case of a fall, accept full responsibility for all injury and damages in writing, including to any other parties, and consent to binding arbitration with capped damages, and we can talk.
Refuse, and you're full of shit, and your ass can stay in the wheelchair, or in the bed with the siderails up. Once you're back in your house, you can play by any rules you damned well please, as it should be, okay? But in my house, it's my rules. Fair is fair.
If you make it past that hurdle (literally) we can talk about mandatory drug and alcohol testing (because people lie, pretty much 75% of the time, about that), and about how many people got to the hospital because they fell at home in the first place, and were too stubborn and stupid to use things like a light switch, their eyeglasses, walkers, canes, crutches, etc., and are now lined up for a shiny new titanium hip to replace their new three-piece femur, because they had to get to the bathroom right this minute, in the dark.
Last night's genius wanted to be released, despite being drunk at 3-4X the legal limit, and not able to recollect how he ended up on his face in the street, right up until the CT revealed he had a major brain bleed. Pull the other one, Einstein, it has bells on it.
I had one lady, brought in because she was too weak to get up for seven hours after a fall at home, tell me she was leaving. I told her to go ahead. And waited. And waited. She could barely raise her voice, let alone her body.
Look, I get that it's frustrating when your 60-, 70-, or 80-year old body doesn't act like it does in your still-18-year-old head. But it isn't my job to mollycoddle your weak grasp on reality. It is my job to make sure I don't have to explain - or lose my license and livelihood - for why you're on the floor of your room on your ass, especially when you're frail, feeble, confused, broken, or on narcotic medications. If you could do Gene Kelly's "Singin' In The Rain" with full choreography, you wouldn't be in the hospital, now would you, smartypants?
This is on my bucket list. But not as a patient in the hospital.
"Patients are idiots" should be carved in stone above the hospital front door, because they won't let me wear a button that says DLTDHYITAOYWO. (I'll help out: "Don't Let The Door Hit You..." work the rest out yourself.)
And hockey pants with pads, and crash helmets should be mandatory attire after age 70.
You tell me which is sillier; dressing that way, or those neat-o zipper scars on your hips, and 6-9 months of OT/PT learning to walk again in your 70s and 80s. If you don't fail, stay in the hospital endlessly, get pneumonia and twenty other opportunistic infections, and then just die.
Because in case you didn't notice, you don't bounce as well as you did when you were five or ten years old.
When someone tells me that 98% of tort lawyers are literally dying of starvation due to lack of business, then we can talk about "overzealous" fall prevention from the medical professions.
Until then, it's crybabies wanting to have it both ways. If you don't like being group punished (and sorry about that, but make no mistake, you are) for the 25% of people (minimum) who're just conniving weasels and outright morons, punch them in the throat in the waiting room, and then go burn their ambulance-chasing lawyers' offices and homes.
But thanks for the entertainment.
You'll win this argument when pigs fly outta your butt.
I truly enjoy taking care of people, and I want each and every one of them to go home and enjoy life as near to whole as human wisdom and the medical arts can make possible. Even when they're not smart enough to figure out that I'm going to act in their best interest, even (especially) if it pisses them off or spoils their plans right this minute. Me and my coworkers easing off for ten seconds can turn into 5 years of court appearances, and six-figure damages. Or someone dying.
Alongside that consideration, someone's momentary butthurt is not a medical complaint, it's a character flaw for them to work out on their own.
Don't like hospital rules? Don't get sick, injured, or old. (As if, but that's the truth of it.)
No one's going to come to your house to enforce them on you. Problem solved.
