Objective To explore the clinical application effect of a locking type restraint tool that patients and their families cannot take down at will, convenient and practical, safe and reliable, comfortable and ethical.Methods After designing the locking restraint tool, 80 patients in the Neurology Department of Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of TCM from January 2014 to December 2016 were selected by convenient sampling method. The participants were randomly divided into the experimental group and the control group, each with 40 cases. The patients in the experimental group were controlled by locking restraint tools, while patients in the control group were treated with traditional bound gloves and restraint bands. The incidence of accidental extubation (i.e. conventional catheters, common gastric tubes and internal jugular vein catheters) and the skin integrity of the restricted site was compared between the two groups. Moreover, the satisfaction of the family members for the constraint instruments was investigated.Results The experimental group had significantly lower accidental extubation rate for conventional catheter and common gastric tubes compared with the control group (P<0.05). However, there were no significant differences in accidental extubation rate for internal jugular vein catheters between two groups (P>0.05). There were two patients in the control group had skin redness at the protective constraint site but the experimental group did not suffer from skin integrity damage. The satisfaction level of the family members in the experimental group was significantly higher than that in the control group (P<0.05).Conclusions The standard use of locking restraint tools can effectively reduce the accidental extubation rate in patients with restlessness, and improve the satisfaction of the family members. It is ethical and can be further applied in patients who need protective restraint.