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.