Earlier this month, we teamed up with Gillian from HCSL to host a webinar that explored what’s changed under the new Nga Paerewa Health and Disability Service Standard.

We learned so much from this webinar and were blown away by the response from health care workers and teams, who clearly want more clarity about how to apply these standards in their workplaces.

We know that restraint remains a grey area, so if you missed it, we encourage you to watch our latest health care webinar on demand, to learn more about how to put the key principles in action.

In the meantime, here are 5 key things we learned from this webinar:

Key learnings:

1. Person centred care, equity of outcomes and cultural considerations - particularly for Māori and Pacific people - underpin these new guidelines and need to be taken into consideration when thinking about how to approach restraint.

2. Under the new guidelines, your goal should be elimination, rather than minimisation. This means it’s important to explore all the options available to you before restraint is used. You may need to educate a resident, their whanau and those around you, and be open to finding alternative solutions.

3. Restraint is anything that limits a person’s normal freedom of movement. This means that taking equipment or mobilisation aids away from people who need them, is a form of restraint too. Watch our restraint webinar for some scenarios that explain this point.

4. We should work together to remove the stigma around restraint. You may consider your workplace to be a restraint-free healthcare environment and, while it’s fantastic that you’re striving for that goal, often the reality is that restraint is happening – it’s just that we’re not always aware of it. The more we talk about restraint, the better we’ll all get at knowing what it is and what it isn’t.

There are times when restrain may be needed. And that’s ok. As long as we are adopt a person-centred approach, follow our assessment process, document and report what we’re doing and why, and regularly reassess a resident/person’s changing needs – then we’re all on the right track.

5. What is and isn’t restraint is still a bit confusing, and it’s ok to ask for help. There are experts like Gillian you can call on, and lots of solutions available today that aid mobilisation and support resident safety, like smart aged residential care beds and care chairs.