The incidence and economic impact of aggression in closed long-stay psychiatric wards

Abstract

Objective

Aggressive behaviour is highly prevalent in long-term psychiatric inpatient care. We aimed to estimate the overall incidence of aggression, the time staff took to handle aggression incidents, and the weighted average financial costs thereof.

Methods

A random sampling procedure was conducted at long-term psychiatric inpatient care facilities. Nurses were asked to recall all incidents (i.e., verbal, physical towards objects, self, or others) of their shift. For the time spent on each type of incident, staff were monitored in real-time. Estimated costs were calculated by the time spent multiplied by hourly wages in addition to material-related costs.

Results

Incidence rates were 90 incidents per patient year. The average time spent per incident was 125 min but differed for each type of incident. Almost 80% of this time was consumed by nursing staff. The average cost per aggression incident was €78; extrapolated per patient year, the total costs were approximately €7000.

Conclusions

The current study found a high rate of aggression incidents in closed long-stay psychiatric wards. Reports of aggression on these types of wards are scarce. Nevertheless, aggression seems to have a severe impact on invested time and related costs, which suggests a need for aggression-prevention and de-escalating programs.

Key points

• Aggression incidents are highly prevalent and are accompanied by high costs.

• The effect of aggression incidents on the workload for staff members is high, especially for nursing staff.

• Studies across countries on the incidence and the costs of aggression among psychiatric inpatients are needed to help model the effects of (new) strategies for aggression reduction.

Keywords:

• Aggression
• costs
• long-stay
• closed ward

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all nurses who contributed to the current study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ZonMw (The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development) under Grant [number 836031016].