Awareness on legal aspect of physical restraining among psychiatric nurses working in National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Background: Physical restrain was one of the ancient interventions used to control psychiatric patients and it is used as an injury preventing measure now. Physical restrain should be used for a short period, not as a punishment and a registered nurse is responsible to protect rights, treat with dignity and provide high quality care during patient restraining. Aims: To assess knowledge, attitudes and practices on physical restraining and to find associations with socio-demographic variables among psychiatric nurses working in NIMH, Sri Lanka. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among a non-probability convenience sample (n= 294) and a pretested self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. The knowledge, attitudes and practices were scaled using a scoring system and the associations between the sociodemographic factors and the knowledge, attitudes and practices were analyzed with chi-square where applicable. Results: Among 255 participants responded, 58.4% (n=149), 54.1% (n=138) and 62.4 %( n=159) nursing officers had a satisfactory knowledge, positive attitudes and favorable practices on physical restraining respectively. Though there wasn’t a significant association between knowledge, attitudes and practice level with their working experience (P= 0.332, 0. 235, 0.522) and with age (P=0.545, 0.106, 0.789) there was a significant association between nursing officers’ knowledge and attitudes (P= 0.000) regarding physical restraining.

Conclusions: Participants had a satisfactory knowledge, positive attitudes and favorable practices regarding physical restraining. The value of conducting continuous in-service education programmes was highlighted in the study.