As a psych nurse who’s worked a unit with door alarms, somebody is going to have an aneurysm if they have to reset that alarm one. more. GOTDAMN MOTHER-FUCKING TIME.
Ours were specifically between the top of the door and the frame to keep people from anchoring a noose there. But that also meant they went off any time somebody finished toweling off out of the shower and threw the towel over, every time somebody grabbed the top of the door frame to stretch, and every time somebody was just mad about something at 2am and wanted all the other patients to suffer too. And you had to walk down to the relevant room and use your key in the little panel next to the door. Every. Single. Time.
So fun fact, there’s actually a academically researched phenomenon called “clinical alarm fatigue” where people get so used to turning alarms off that they stop checking before dismissing them. It’s like when you play a heavily modded game (mine was morrowind) and keep skipping through bogus warnings about missing textures and whatever but while you’re spamming the enter key a real one pops up and the whole thing crashes. It’s part of how radonda vaught killed that lady. Many of the alarms she overrode that day were warnings the nurses routinely had to override to complete daily tasks.
Anyway that’s the story of how the one time somebody did actually try to hang themselves the staff members turned off the alarm, assured the patient it was a false one, and walked away.
spoiler
The reason I know this is because fortunately, instead of trying a different way, the patient eventually brought out the noose they had hastily jammed under the mattress and showed the day nurse, so I was able to be told this story in evening report instead of the health systems quarterly sentinel event PowerPoint. I have a Daisy from that patient for the talk we had that night actually, it’s one of two I’ve kept (there’s a lot that are just inappropriate in one way or another, although admin filters out the really bad ones). Kid wound up in the hospital because he got outed in fall semester and his family told him not to come come for Christmas. We typically had at least a few “homeless for the holidays” every year.
It’s a nursing excellence award. Pretty prestigious. You can be nominated by a patient or an employee. They write down why they think you are deserving of one on a card and then a panel chooses who gets awarded. There’s even a runner-up kind of award if the nurse was in the final considerations but didn’t actually win.
oh yeah should have said it’s a nom not a full, one nurse at our hospital won one for changing the side a patient’s IV was on (in fairness that nurse is generally a sweetheart), but I’ve never seen a psych nurse actually win. Apparently at my last hospital the psych unit got the most actually but I think it was because people would hand them to the euphorically happy manics to keep them busy. I would usually hand them out to say a “special thank you” to their nurse because I figured on the off-chance they weren’t trying to slip the nurse their number or draw her a picture of their penis it would be nice. In retrospect maybe that’s why the committee ignored most of them though.
I mean I do think suicide should be legal but I also don’t think we should let people just do it without making them stop for a second and be evaluated to see if maybe there’s any better options for them that a mental illness might be preventing them from seeing.
As a psych nurse who’s worked a unit with door alarms, somebody is going to have an aneurysm if they have to reset that alarm one. more. GOTDAMN MOTHER-FUCKING TIME.
Ours were specifically between the top of the door and the frame to keep people from anchoring a noose there. But that also meant they went off any time somebody finished toweling off out of the shower and threw the towel over, every time somebody grabbed the top of the door frame to stretch, and every time somebody was just mad about something at 2am and wanted all the other patients to suffer too. And you had to walk down to the relevant room and use your key in the little panel next to the door. Every. Single. Time.
So fun fact, there’s actually a academically researched phenomenon called “clinical alarm fatigue” where people get so used to turning alarms off that they stop checking before dismissing them. It’s like when you play a heavily modded game (mine was morrowind) and keep skipping through bogus warnings about missing textures and whatever but while you’re spamming the enter key a real one pops up and the whole thing crashes. It’s part of how radonda vaught killed that lady. Many of the alarms she overrode that day were warnings the nurses routinely had to override to complete daily tasks.
Anyway that’s the story of how the one time somebody did actually try to hang themselves the staff members turned off the alarm, assured the patient it was a false one, and walked away.
spoiler
The reason I know this is because fortunately, instead of trying a different way, the patient eventually brought out the noose they had hastily jammed under the mattress and showed the day nurse, so I was able to be told this story in evening report instead of the health systems quarterly sentinel event PowerPoint. I have a Daisy from that patient for the talk we had that night actually, it’s one of two I’ve kept (there’s a lot that are just inappropriate in one way or another, although admin filters out the really bad ones). Kid wound up in the hospital because he got outed in fall semester and his family told him not to come come for Christmas. We typically had at least a few “homeless for the holidays” every year.
Nobody will ever understand alarm fatigue, or its close cousins. Not in history.
Happens in IT as well. If you choose to alert on all the things, you’re going to get burned at some point.
Sounds like when you start sleeping through your alarm clock, and the phone alarm, and the other other alarm clock.
What’s a daisy in this context?
It’s a nursing excellence award. Pretty prestigious. You can be nominated by a patient or an employee. They write down why they think you are deserving of one on a card and then a panel chooses who gets awarded. There’s even a runner-up kind of award if the nurse was in the final considerations but didn’t actually win.
oh yeah should have said it’s a nom not a full, one nurse at our hospital won one for changing the side a patient’s IV was on (in fairness that nurse is generally a sweetheart), but I’ve never seen a psych nurse actually win. Apparently at my last hospital the psych unit got the most actually but I think it was because people would hand them to the euphorically happy manics to keep them busy. I would usually hand them out to say a “special thank you” to their nurse because I figured on the off-chance they weren’t trying to slip the nurse their number or draw her a picture of their penis it would be nice. In retrospect maybe that’s why the committee ignored most of them though.
Maybe imprison fewer people against their will then
I mean I do think suicide should be legal but I also don’t think we should let people just do it without making them stop for a second and be evaluated to see if maybe there’s any better options for them that a mental illness might be preventing them from seeing.