Abbreviations

Since I've been focusing on falls for my Tuesday disease process feature, I thought I'd focus on one of the few abbreviations that occur in the medical record that can be problematic when patients are at high risk for falls.

BRP - Bathroom Privileges

Bathroom privileges means that someone has determined that the patient is not at medical risk to ambulate to and from the bathroom to their bed, but should be in bed or the chair the rest of the time. It means they should NOT be up ambulating in the hall unassisted.

This particular order is really common in the prenatal care area and in the geriatric populations. In the geriatric populations as with the prenatal populations, the patient is usually very sick or hooked up to several machines so going any distance is difficult with out assistance.

As you can see, from both populations where this is common, it is likely that they're off balance for some reason and ambulating long distances is a bad idea.

Example

Activity Level: BRP

Pt has BRP, pt has been seen ambulating several times in the hall without assistance, able to be redirected.