Freedom and safety. A Colorado center cares for Alzheimer's patients

Namaste Alzheimer Center, in Colorado Springs, CO, was founded in 1990 as a free-standing special care facility for persons suffering from Alzheimer's disease. We do not physically restrain our residents and make only minimal use of psychotropic drugs. We want our residents to be as free of restrictions as possible--and also as safe as possible. Sometimes these goals conflict. As our census climbed, the number of resident falls seemed to be climbing as well. We responded to this by charting the falls. The graphs showed us which residents had the most falls, which building wings most falls occurred in, and the times of day falls were most likely to occur. Armed with this information, our staff deployed themselves in a way to help prevent falls. Namaste had 35 resident falls in October 1992. In February 1993 we had only nine. We not only reduced the number of falls; by furnishing the wings with beanbag chairs and futons instead of the usual furniture, we made falls less dangerous. We are now in the process of sharing what we have learned with the three acute care facilities that, with Namaste, are owned and operated by Penrose-St. Francis Health Care System.