As a psychiatric nurse, I encounter many situations that prompt me to reflect on the relationships among different factors that affect my work. I am primarily involved in administering interventions to patients with various mental illnesses. One of the situations I have encountered regards the use of restraints. I have noted that patients tend to be more aggressive when restrained and could harm themselves. The concepts in this situation are restraining harm and patients. A theory can be used to explain the association between two factors. From my observations, the use of restraints tends to encourage aggression, thereby exposing patients to a greater risk of suffering harm. In essence, a practitioner applies restraint directly and significantly impacts the harm that the patient endures. Based on Ye et al. (2017), the outcome of using restraints in hospitals contributes to severe psychological and medical complications that eventually require more nurses to handle the problem created.
The physical constraint is a coercive technique that ensures patient safety in a mental health setting. As Ye et al. (2019) show, while the technique achieves its purpose, the designed devices restrict patient movement and pose a critical risk to the patient and those around. Harm is any form of physical injury inflicted to the patient’s body, and among restrained patients, serious body injuries like heart stress, poor blood circulation, infections, and in worst scenarios, death (AAN, 2021). Some scientific literature lends support to my theory. For example, according to Aixiang and Junrong (2017), when psychiatric nurses restrain patients, they create an unsafe environment that could cause the patients to sustain injuries. These scholars go as far as to caution that the use of restraints may even cause death.
They are not alone in linking restraints to an increased risk of harm. Ye et al. (2019) are other researchers who determined that physical injury is an adverse outcome of deploying restraints on psychiatric patients. According to these scholars, the patients may also experience psychological trauma when restrained. I have acquired the central insight that psychiatric nurses need to prioritize patient safety and well-being. They should take steps to minimize patients’ harm when subjected to specific interventions. Additionally, I have gathered that while certain factors may seem unrelated, clear and, un-disputable associations become evident upon closer scrutiny. There is no question that restraints are a harmful intervention that should only be employed when other measures are unavailable or proven ineffective.
References
Aixiang X., & Junrong Y. (2017). Suggestion for reducing the use of physical restraint in mental health settings. Rivista di psichiatria, 52:212.
American Academy of Nursing. (2021). Twenty things nurses and patients should question: Physical restraints. Web.
Ye, J., Wang, C., Xiao, A., Xia, Z., Yu, L., Lin, J., Liao, Y., Xu, Y., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Physical restraint in mental health nursing: A concept analysis. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 6(3), 343–348. Web.
Ye J., Xiao A., Yu L., Guo J., Lei H., Wei H. (2017). Staff training reduces the use of physical restraint in mental health services, evidence-based reflection for China. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing;32:488–494.