Thursday, May 11, 2006

Via Intueri: "Five-Point Restraints"


Maria is a psychiatry resident:
And so it began—and it happened much more quickly than I had anticipated (although time may simply pass faster when one is actively struggling against five other human beings). I kicked, I floundered, I wriggled, I did my best to wrest myself from their grips. Before I knew it, however, one person each had a hold of each arm and leg. Their hands were placed outside of each of my knee and elbow joints, restricting my excess flailing. And then they picked me up off of the floor. Which sucked, because then there was nothing upon which I could brace myself. I continued to kick and jerk about—and started getting all sweaty and gross in the process. Two people in White Coats walked past, looking at the scene with perplexed expressions. Soon, I was plopped onto the hospital bed and as I tried to wriggle off, hands pinned my limbs (around my joints again) to the bed. The men were definitely exerting more force on me than the women—but there still wasn’t any jerking or pulling occurring. They oddly protected my joints (something I did not appreciate until after the episode was done). The leather restraint belt encircled my waist first. Then my hands were cuffed to the bed at the level of my waist. In the meantime, I continued to kick at my captors, but to no avail. (I later learned that even though legs are stronger than arms, arms and hands tend to cause more injury than legs and feet, hence the order of restraint.) The cuffs then went around my ankles and there I was, restrained to the bed. The right wrist restraint was a bit tight. I sat up and, in vain, tried to jostle myself off of the bed. Right. They then took my shoes off. “Why?” I asked, at this time resting—it takes a lot of energy to try to escape five people. “Because you could clock us in the head with these things,” one of them replied. “Plus, we would now be putting you into a hospital gown.”
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