A descriptive study on the use of restrictive interventions for potentially or actually violent patients in the emergency department

BACKGROUND

Restrictive interventions (chemical, physical, or mechanical restraints) to manage patients who are potentially or actually violent in the emergency department (ED) can be harmful and costly. Non-restrictive interventions are advocated; but this must be preceded with an understanding of patient characteristics that influence their use. A study was conducted to describe the use of restrictive interventions and ascribe it with patient characteristics in the ED.

METHODS

Records from October 2020 to March 2021 in the occupational violence database were used to analyse patient characteristics and restrictive interventions. Logistic regression was used to establish influencing factors of restrictive interventions adjusting for clinically relevant confounders.

RESULTS

Of the N = 1276 potentially or actually violent patients, 70 % received restrictive interventions. Chemical restraint was common, with 1 in 2 patients receiving either oral medication or intramuscular injection. Probability of restrictive interventions were higher in patients who were intoxicated [(adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 3.48, 95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.675-7.21)], had high triage score (aOR 2.084, 95 % CI 1.094-3.96), and were in the ED involuntarily (aOR 1.494, 95 % CI 1.105-2.020).

CONCLUSION

The results reveal the need for multifaceted approaches that limit the presentations of, and minimise restrictive interventions among, potentially or actually violent patients.

International research into 22 years of use of chemical restraint: An evidence overview

BACKGROUND

Chemical restraint (CR) (also known as rapid tranquilisation) is the forced (non-consenting) administration of medications to manage uncontrolled aggression, anxiety, or violence in people who are likely to cause harm to themselves or others. Our population of interest was adults with mental health disorders (with/without substance abuse). There has been a growing international movement over the past 22 years towards reducing/eliminating restrictive practices such as CR. It is appropriate to summarise the research that has been published over this time, identify trends and gaps in knowledge, and highlight areas for new research to inform practice.

AIMS

To undertake a comprehensive systematic search to identify, and describe, the volume and nature of primary international research into CR published since 1995.

METHODS

This paper reports the processes and overall findings of a systematic search for all available primary research on CR published between 1 January 1996 and 31 July 2018. It describes the current evidence base by hierarchy of evidence, country (ies) producing the research, CR definitions, study purpose, and outcome measures.

RESULTS

This review identified 311 relevant primary studies (21 RCTs; 46 non-controlled experimental or prospective observational studies; 77 cross-sectional studies; 69 retrospective studies; 67 opinion pieces, position or policy statements; and 31 qualitative studies). The USA, UK, and Australia contributed over half the research, whilst cross-country collaborations comprised 6% of it. The most common research settings comprised acute psychiatric wards (23.3%), general psychiatric wards (21.6%), and general hospital emergency departments (19.0%).

DISCUSSION

A key lesson learnt whilst compiling this database of research into CR was to ensure that all papers described non-consenting administration of medications to manage adults with uncontrolled aggression, anxiety, or violence. There were tensions in the literature between using effective CR without producing adverse events, and how to decide when CR was needed (compared with choosing non-chemical intervention for behavioural emergencies), respecting patients' dignity whilst safeguarding their safety, and preserving safe workplaces for staff, and care environments for other patients. The range of outcome measures suggests opportunities to standardise future research.

Management of the aggressive emergency department patient: non-pharmacological perspectives and evidence base

INTRODUCTION

Aggression in the Emergency Department (ED) remains an ongoing issue, described as reaching epidemic proportions, with an impact on staff recruitment, retention, and ability to provide quality care. Most literature has focused on the definition (or lack of) core concepts, efforts to quantify the phenomenon or provide an epidemiological profile. Relatively little offers evidence-based interventions or evaluations of the same.

AIM

To identify the range of suggested practices and the evidence base for currently recommended actions relating to the management of the aggressive Emergency Department patient.

METHODS

A meta-synthesis of existing reviews of violence and aggression in the acute health-care setting, including management of the aggressive patient, was undertaken. This provided the context for critical consideration of the management of this patient group in the ED and implications for clinical practice.

RESULTS

An initial outline of issues was followed by a systematic search and 15 reviews were further assessed. Commonly identified interventions are grouped around educational, interpersonal, environmental, and physical responses. These actions can be focused in terms of overall responses to the wider issues of violence and aggression, targeted at the pre-event, event, or post-event phase in terms of strategies; however, there is a very limited evidence base to show the effectiveness of strategies suggested.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

The lack of evidence-based intervention strategies leaves clinicians in a difficult situation, often enacting practices based on anecdote rather than evidence. Local solutions to local problems are occurring in a pragmatic manner, but there needs to be clarification and integration of workable processes for evaluating and disseminating best practice.

CONCLUSION

There is limited evidence reporting on interventional studies, in addition to identification of the need for high quality longitudinal and evaluation studies to determine the efficacy of those responses that have been identified.

Management of Violence and Aggression in Emergency Environment; a Narrative Review of 200 Related Articles

Context:

The aim of this study is to reviewing various approaches for dealing with agitated patients in emergency department (ED) including of chemical and physical restraint methods.

Evidence acquisition:

This review was conducted by searching “Violence,” “Aggression,” and “workplace violence” keywords in these databases: PubMed, Scopus, EmBase, ScienceDirect, Cochrane Database, and Google Scholar. In addition to using keywords for finding the papers, the related article capability was used to find more papers. From the found papers, published papers from 2005 to 2018 were chosen to enter the paper pool for further review.

Results:

Ultimately, 200 papers were used in this paper to conduct a comprehensive review regarding violence management in ED. The results were categorized as prevention, verbal methods, pharmacological interventions and physical restraint.

Conclusion:

In this study various methods of chemical and physical restraint methods were reviewed so an emergency medicine physician be aware of various available choices in different clinical situations for agitated patients.

Physical Restraint Use in Adult Patients Presenting to a General Emergency Department

STUDY OBJECTIVE

The prevalence of agitation among emergency department (ED) patients is increasing. Physical restraints are routinely used to prevent self-harm and to protect staff, but are associated with serious safety risks. To date, characterization of physical restraint use in the emergency setting has been limited. We thus aim to describe restraint patterns in the general ED to guide future investigation in the management of behavioral disorders.

METHODS

We conducted a cross-sectional study of adult patients presenting to 5 adult EDs within a large regional health system for 2013 to 2015, and with a physical restraint order during their visit. We undertook descriptive analyses and cluster analysis to determine unique meaningful groups within our sample.

RESULTS

In 956,153 total ED visits, 4,661 patients (0.5%) had associated restraint orders, representing 3,739 unique patients. The median age was 47 years (interquartile range 32 to 59 years), 66.7% of patients were men, 61.9% had a psychiatric history, and 91.1% arrived by ambulance. For chief complaints, 33.7% were alcohol or drug use, 45.4% medical, 12.3% psychiatric, and 8.5% trauma. Cluster analysis identified 2 distinct cohorts. A younger, predominantly male population presented with alcohol or drug use, whereas an older group arrived with medical complaints.

CONCLUSION

Our data found strong association of alcohol or drug use with physical restraints and identified a unique elderly population with behavioral disturbances in the ED. Further characterization of causal links and safer practices to manage agitation for these vulnerable populations are needed.

Mechanical restraint in an emergency department: a consecutive series of 593 cases

The objective is to describe the characteristics of mechanically restrained patients in the emergency department (ED) of a university hospital and to evaluate the quality of restraint documentation that was filled out according to the dedicated protocol with respect to the law on restraint. All adult patients (≥16 years) who were admitted to the ED from January 2009 to December 2010 and were mechanically restrained were included. We assessed medical and demographic characteristics, the completeness of the dedicated protocol, and the concomitant use of chemical sedation. 72,844 patients were admitted to the ED. Of these, 593 (0.81%) were mechanically restrained. Two types of patients were restrained: young patients under the influence of psychoactive substances who were usually discharged home, and confused older patients who were hospitalized. 186 dedicated protocols were missing (31.4%). From the 407 filled-out protocols, only 119 (29.2%) were complete. Of the mechanically restrained patients, 215 (36.2%) received additional chemical sedation. Even though restraint is strictly regulated by law, many protocols justifying the privation of liberty were not filled out. This emphasizes the need for strict respect of the dedicated protocol and the use of guidelines and training sessions for nursing and medical staff that address specific procedures for the two categories of patients needing to be restrained.

Deriving a Framework for a Systems Approach to Agitated Patient Care in the Emergency Department

BACKGROUND

The rising agitated patient population presenting to the emergency department (ED) has caused increasing safety threats for health care workers and patients. Development of evidence-based strategies has been limited by the lack of a structured framework to examine agitated patient care in the ED. In this study, a systems approach from the patient safety literature was used to derive a comprehensive theoretical framework for addressing ED patient agitation.

METHODS

A mixed-methods approach was used with ED staff members at an academic site and a community site of a regional health care network. Participants consisted of resident and attending physicians, physician assistants/nurse practitioners, nurses, technicians, and security officers. After a simulated agitated patient encounter to prime participants, uniprofessional and interprofessional focus groups were conducted, followed by a structured thematic analysis using a grounded theory approach. Quantitative data consisted of surveys of violence exposure and attitudes toward patient aggression and management.

RESULTS

Data saturation was reached with 57 participants. Violence exposure was higher for technicians, nurses, and officers. Conflicting priorities and management challenges occurred due to four main interconnected elements: perceived complex patient motivations; a patient care paradox between professional duty and personal safety; discordant interprofessional dynamics mitigated by respect and trust; and logistical challenges impeding care delivery and long-term outcomes.

CONCLUSION

Using a systems approach, five interconnected levels of ED agitated patient care delivery were identified: patient, staff, team, ED microsystem, and health care macrosystem. These care dimensions were synthesized to form a novel patient safety-based framework that can help guide future research, practice, and policy.

The Patient Care Paradox: An Interprofessional Qualitative Study of Agitated Patient Care in the Emergency Department

OBJECTIVES

The emergency department (ED) has been recognized as a high-risk environment for workplace violence. Acutely agitated patients who perpetrate violence against healthcare workers represent a complex care challenge in the ED. Recommendations to improve safety are often based on expert opinion rather than empirical data. In this study we aim to describe the lived experience of staff members caring for this population to provide a broad perspective of ED patient violence. The findings of this study will contribute to the development of a comprehensive framework for ED agitated patient care that will guide safety interventions.

METHODS

We conducted uniprofessional focus groups and individual interviews using a phenomenologic approach with emergency medicine resident physicians, ED staff nurses, patient care technicians, and hospital police officers at an urban hospital in New York City. Audio recordings were transcribed and coded for thematic analysis using the constant comparison method.

RESULTS

We reached theoretical saturation with 31 interprofessional participants. Three broad themes emerged from our analysis: 1) ED healthcare workers provide high-quality care to a marginalized patient population that concurrently poses safety threats, creating a patient care paradox; 2) teamwork is critical to safely managing this population, but hierarchy and professional silos hinder coordinated care between healthcare professionals; and 3) environmental challenges and systems issues both in and outside the ED exacerbate threats to safety.

CONCLUSION

The experience of ED staff members while caring for agitated patients is complex and multidimensional. We identified issues that coalesced into four tiers of healthcare delivery at the individual, team, environment, and system levels. Future research is needed to determine applicability of our findings across institutions to build a comprehensive framework for ED agitated patient care.

Coordinating a Team Response to Behavioral Emergencies in the Emergency Department: A Simulation-Enhanced Interprofessional Curriculum

Introduction

While treating potentially violent patients in the emergency department (ED), both patients and staff may be subject to unintentional injury. Emergency healthcare providers are at the greatest risk of experiencing physical and verbal assault from patients. Preliminary studies have shown that a team-based approach with targeted staff training has significant positive outcomes in mitigating violence in healthcare settings. Staff attitudes toward patient aggression have also been linked to workplace safety, but current literature suggests that providers experience fear and anxiety while caring for potentially violent patients. The objectives of the study were (1) to develop an interprofessional curriculum focusing on improving teamwork and staff attitudes toward patient violence using simulation-enhanced education for ED staff, and (2) to assess attitudes towards patient aggression both at pre- and post-curriculum implementation stages using a survey-based study design.

Methods

Formal roles and responsibilities for each member of the care team, including positioning during restraint placement, were predefined in conjunction with ED leadership. Emergency medicine residents, nurses and hospital police officers were assigned to interprofessional teams. The curriculum started with an introductory lecture discussing de-escalation techniques and restraint placement as well as core tenets of interprofessional collaboration. Next, we conducted two simulation scenarios using standardized participants (SPs) and structured debriefing. The study consisted of a survey-based design comparing pre- and post-intervention responses via a paired Student t-test to assess changes in staff attitudes. We used the validated Management of Aggression and Violence Attitude Scale (MAVAS) consisting of 30 Likert-scale questions grouped into four themed constructs.

Results

One hundred sixty-two ED staff members completed the course with >95% staff participation, generating a total of 106 paired surveys. Constructs for internal/biomedical factors, external/staff factors and situational/interactional perspectives on patient aggression significantly improved (p<0.0001, p<0.002, p<0.0001 respectively). Staff attitudes toward management of patient aggression did not significantly change (p=0.542). Multiple quality improvement initiatives were successfully implemented, including the creation of an interprofessional crisis management alert and response protocol. Staff members described appreciation for our simulation-based curriculum and welcomed the interaction with SPs during their training.

Conclusion

A structured simulation-enhanced interprofessional intervention was successful in improving multiple facets of ED staff attitudes toward behavioral emergency care.