THE USE OF PHYSICAL RESTRAINTS IN AN ACUTE CARE MEDICAL WARD (IMMOBILIZATION).
Contributors: University of California, San Francisco.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 287
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This ethnographic study, conducted in an acute care medical ward, identified practices related to restraining patients. The study's aim was to derive an understanding of the use of restraints. This involved investigation of the conditions under which patients became physically confined, why devices were kept in place, and what terminated their requirement.

The study was conducted on a 34-bed medical ward in a general public teaching hospital. The study sample included permanent nursing staff and patients in physical restraints. Data were collected through participant observation, brief interviews with nurses and patients, and observation of interactions with patients.

Results indicated that nurses were younger and had a shorter employment record than support staff. Day staff were employed for the longest period, while night nurses were more junior.

Total number of hospitalized days for patients in physical restraints was 496 days, 14.12 percent of the hospitalized days of the total patient population. The average length of time spent in restraints was 13 days for male and 11 days for female patients. The Posey jacket was the most frequently used restraint. Limb and trunk restraints were classified according to the number of body parts confined. The reasons cited most often for initiating the application of restraints were preservation of treatments, conditions of altered mentation, and for the patients' safety. From the patients' vantage point, restraints were felt to be a punishment and made them feel anger, despair, or a sense of being reduced to the position of an infant. Nurses agreed that restraints were necessary and warranted by the patients' behaviors and conditions. The risk of a patient coming to harm reduced the use of physical restraints to a matter of inadvertence. Nurses believed that restraints prevented the patient from coming to harm, thereby converting this practice to one of caring or necessity.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-12, Section: B, page: 4826.

Thesis (D.N.S.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, 1987.

School code: 0034.