The restraint is a physical or mechanical method applied to patient in order to reduce his or her freedom of movement or access to his or her own body. It is an extreme safety procedure for control purposes , which is indicated only when all therapeutic restrictive measures for the patient who is a danger to himself or herself or others have failed.
The purpose of this study was to describe the frequency of the use of mechanical restraints in an acute psychiatric ward, for period of about 8 years, and to analyze which variable related to demographic and clinical features of patients and organizational modality of staff may have significantly influenced the use of this procedure.
This retrospective study was conducted in the Servizio Psichiatrico di Diagnosi e Cura of Modena Centro of Az . USL- MO. The following variables of our sample, which was represented by all restrained patients admitted from 1 -1- 2005 to 31-12-2012, were collected: age, gender, nationality, psychiatric diagnoses , comorbid organic diagnosis, state and duration admission, motivation and duration of restraints, nursing shift and day of restraint during the hospitalization, number of patients admitted at the time of restraint and organizational changes during the observation period. The variables of our sample were statistically compared with those of all other not restrained patients admitted in the same period.
The data obtained highlight that mechanical restraints were primarily used as a safety procedure to deal with dangerous behavior and was more frequently applied to male patients during the first days of hospitalization. Its use was influenced not only by clinical factors, but mainly by staff and organizational factors, which have permitted a gradual but significant reduction in the use of this procedure.
