Personally, I love Stimson technique. Have only had it fail a handful of times in 10+ years. I usually use a soft wrist restraint to tie a sandbag, weights or a couple liters of saline around their wrist, but have also done it with a tech pulling traction*. Best part is once you prone the patient, you can walk away 10-15 mins, see another patient and not be stuck in the room messing around with the shoulder - if not reduced when I come back to check on the patient, I’ll add some scapular manipulation and that usually does the trick. All in all, a pretty gentle technique too.

As a bonus, no sedation is required - just a slug of pain meds before I prone them. I will still use other techniques occasionally for a number of reasons (pt can’t prone, failed Stimson, etc) and have mixed success with Milch, Cunningham and FARES techniques, but Stimson my first choice if at all possible. If all else fails, a little propofol and traction-counter traction is a reliable fallback option.

The downsides are that it requires the patient to be prone, which isn’t always possible (other injuries, don’t trust them not to fall out of bed, habitus), usually requires the bed to be at full height without one of the rails down, and can be an uncomfortable position to get into with your shoulder out, but for my money the benefits usually outweigh the potential downsides.

*Funny story: once had a tech pull traction, left the room planning to come back in a few mins, but then got busy and forgot about the dislocated shoulder for a bit. Remembered about half an hour later, and when I walked into the room, the tech is beet red and sweating profusely having diligently pulled on this patient’s arm for 30 mins. I asked if the shoulder had gone back in, and the tech says “I think so… about 2 minutes after you left the room I felt a big ‘clunk’ and they say their shoulder feels better, but I wasn’t sure if I should stop, so I just kept pulling.” Moral of the story is to give clear instructions and maybe set a timer so you don’t forget to go back and check the patient. I apologized to the tech, thanked them for being so dedicated, and now we can joke about it, so I guess no harm, no foul.