Reducing conflict and containment rates on acute psychiatric wards: The Safewards cluster randomised controlled trial.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Acute psychiatric wards manage patients whose actions may threaten safety (conflict). Staff act to avert or minimise harm (containment). The Safewards model enabled the identification of ten interventions to reduce the frequency of both.

Objective

To test the efficacy of these interventions.

Design

A pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial with psychiatric hospitals and wards as the units of randomisation. The main outcomes were rates of conflict and containment.

Participants

Staff and patients in 31 randomly chosen wards at 15 randomly chosen hospitals.

Results

For shifts with conflict or containment incidents, the experimental condition reduced the rate of conflict events by 15% (95% CI 5.7-23.7%) [corrected] relative to the control in

SUBMITTER: Bowers L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4518134 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature