Nurses' Attitudes Toward Using of Patients' Physical Restraint At Psychiatric Hospitals In Baghdad

Abstract

Objectives: The study aims to examine the level of nurses' attitude toward physical restraint in psychiatric hospitals in Baghdad. And to identify the relationship between nurses' attitude and some of their demographic characteristics.

Methodology: A descriptive study was conducted in the period of January - May, 2014 on a purposive sample of 105 nurse who were working at psychiatric wards and hospital in Baghdad, these hospitals were: Baghdad Teaching Hospital\ Medical City Directorate and Ibn Rushd Teaching Hospital and Al Rashad Teaching Hospital \ Al Rusafa Health Directorate. A self administered questionnaire was constructed by a researcher for the present study. The constructed questionnaire consisted of two parts: the first contained the covering letter to obtain nurses' agreement to participate in the study and some of socio-demographic and job characteristic of nurses; the Second is the scale of nurses' attitudes. The validity of the questionnaire was done by content validity through the using of panel experts, and reliability of the questionnaire was done by internal consistency through the pilot study and the computation of Alpha Correlation Coefficient. The data were collected through the utilization of the self administrative questionnaire as a mean of data collection; and the utilization of structured interviewing. Statistical analyses were taken by using statistical software for social science (SPSS) version 15.0, in which a descriptive and inferential statistical approaches were applied such as: frequencies, percentage, mean of scores, standard deviation, alpha correlation coefficient and chi- square test. 

Results: The results of the study revealed that the majority of nurses were males (72.4%) with age ranging between 30 - 39 years old (53.3%) and graduated of the medical institution (41.9%). More than half of them having 1-9 years
of employment in the nursing field (55.2%) and working in psychiatric nursing for the same period of their employment in nursing (75%), and 88% of the nurses was distributed in the psychiatric wards. Psychiatric nurses have higher attitudes toward using physical restraint (64.8%). There is no significant relationship between nurses' attitudes and any of their characteristics concerning the current study.

Conclusions: The study concluded that psychiatric nurses have positive attitudes toward using of physical restraints
as alternative management for psychiatric patients. And also attitudes do not influence by Nurses' demographic
characteristics.

Recommendations: The study recommended the importance for psychiatric nurses to know that physical restraints
be implemented as a last resort. And is necessary to implement restraint, the decision to do so should be less
arbitrary, more rational, less frequent, and less traumatic.