Staff responses to interventions aiming to reduce mechanical restraint in adult mental health inpatient settings: a questionnaire-based survey

Abstract

Purpose

To explore mental health staff’s responses towards interventions designed to reduce the use of mechanical restraint (MR) in adult mental health inpatient settings.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey. The questionnaire, made available online via REDCap, presented 20 interventions designed to reduce MR use. Participants were asked to rate and rank the interventions based on their viewpoints regarding the relevance and importance of each intervention.

Results

A total of 128 mental health staff members from general and forensic mental health inpatient units across the Mental Health Services in the Region of Southern Denmark completed the questionnaire (response rate = 21.3%). A total of 90.8% of the ratings scored either ‘agree’ (45.2%) or ‘strongly agree’ (45.6%) concerning the relevance of the interventions in reducing MR use. Overall and in the divided analysis, interventions labelled as ‘building relationship’ and ‘patient-related knowledge’ claimed high scores in the staff’s rankings of the interventions’ importance concerning implementation. Conversely, interventions like ‘carers’ and ‘standardised assessments’ received low scores.

Conclusions

The staff generally considered that the interventions were relevant. Importance rankings were consistent across the divisions chosen, with a range of variance and dispersion being recorded among certain groups.

Keywords:

• Mechanical restraint
• mental health staff
• physical restraint
• psychiatry
• restrictive practices

Acknowledgements

The authors take this opportunity to express their gratitude to Pia Veldt Larsen for input and expertise regarding the statistical analysis. We are also grateful to the Open Patient data Explorative Network (OPEN), Odense University Hospital, Region of Southern Denmark, for use of their resources. Finally, the participants are thanked for their time and effort dedicated to participating in the study.

Disclosure statement

MLP has received grants from FOSTREN, Harboefonden, Danish Nurses Organization and Novo Nordisk Foundation. The remaining authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings are not publicly available, but they may be made available upon reasonable request to the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Psychiatric Research Fund in the Region of Southern Denmark (Grant number: A3620). The funder played no role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data; the preparation, review or approval of the paper; or the decision to submit for publication.