Comparison in attitudes between nursing and other students in relation to containment measures for disturbed psychiatric patients

Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare university student attitudes to containment with that of psychiatric students. Nurses face the potential for aggression and violence in everyday psychiatric nursing practice and as such are by necessity required to employ measures that contain and control patients with difficult or destructive behaviours. The attitudes to containment methods questionnaire was employed to gather data from a sample of non-nursing students (n=117) and student psychiatric nurses (n=114) at a UK University between May and September 2002. Data were analysed in SPSS using multivariate analysis of variance. Significant differences on attitudes to containment measures for the non-nursing students were found for gender, age and if the respondent had known anyone who had been a patient on a psychiatric ward. There was greater approval of physical restraint, IM medication, mechanical restraint and net beds by male respondents who were also more likely to consider containment methods acceptable and dignified. The non-nursing sample approved significantly less of PRN medication and significantly more of mechanical restraint and net beds than the student nurses. The views of non-nursing students differed significantly, indicating the presence of stereotypical negative views about nurses' level of responsibility in providing medical care; a greater acceptance of containment methods considered abhorrent by nursing students; and in contradiction, a lesser approval of the more severe methods of containment that are in current use.