With a focus on safety and patient dignity paired with the goal of reducing trauma, hospitals across North America continue to utilize padded rooms and other spaces for their patients. In an industry that has quite honestly been revolutionized over the past decade, the idea of padded rooms has gone from the sentiment of punishment to one of proper treatment for patients in need.
With heavy regulation and putting the needs of the patient first, hospitals and other healthcare facilities are embracing seclusion and safety rooms for patients who might be a danger to themselves or to others around them. As a safe way to reduce the possible effects of extreme aggression, agitation or psychosis, padded rooms are being used in a variety of ways.
Shortening the Overall Time of Use
The goal is to use the padded room for a brief period, usually only as long as necessary to calm the patient and assess their condition. Once the patient is calm and stable, they are removed from the room and placed in a less restrictive environment.
Many hospitals now aim to create calming, therapeutic spaces that emphasize patient dignity, reducing the stigma of being placed in such rooms.
Focusing on De-Escalation
By reducing confrontation, many hospitals are now using more therapeutic and less punitive methods of managing agitated or aggressive patients. Padded rooms are less commonly used in emergency or psychiatric settings, as many hospitals now focus on creating calming environments with low lighting, soft music, and trained staff in de-escalation techniques.
Regulated and Monitored Use
This is a big one for the medical industry that was once chastized for the use of padded rooms. As stated above, as more facilities move away from padded room use as punishment, additional standards and guidelines have been introduced to the use of padded rooms. In fact, many facilities are now bound by such guidelines by various organizations including the Joint Commission, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and state-specific agencies.
Hospitals are now required to adhere to strict protocols to ensure the safety and rights of the patient, and there are often legal requirements for monitoring, documentation, and regular review of the use of such rooms. These protocols remain central to the growing movement to protect the rights of individuals in psychiatric care, and hospitals must now demonstrate that less restrictive alternatives have been tried before resorting to seclusion or restraint.
Expanding Technology
With the increasing use of surveillance and monitoring technologies, hospitals may use cameras and staff observation to ensure that patients in seclusion are being safely monitored and that they are not at risk of harm. This allows hospitals to closely track the patient’s well-being during the period of seclusion.
While padded rooms are still utilized in certain high-security or acute psychiatric settings, the good news is, their use has become more controlled, regulated, and oriented toward therapeutic goals. With patient wellness at the forefront of many medical professionals, these rooms are now utilized in a safe and pleasant manner that has since been proven to improve patient success and reduce the risk of further harm or treatment.
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