Reduction of coercive measures under routine conditions in psychiatric hospitals 2004-2019: Strong effects in old age psychiatry, much less in general psychiatry.

BACKGROUND: Many interventions to reduce the use of seclusion and restraint have been suggested in the last decades. Evidence-based interventions in old age psychiatry are different from those in general psychiatry. A common database for psychiatric hospitals introduced in 2004 allowed to examine the use of seclusion and restraint over 16 years under routine conditions. METHODS: A registry for coercive measures in the Federal State of Baden-Wuerttemberg has been available since 2015, and comprises all 32 hospitals licensed to admit involuntary patients. A study group had collected data prospectively since 2004 from a subsample of these hospitals. We analyzed the mean percentage of patients subjected to coercive measures and the mean cumulative duration of these interventions in ICD-10 diagnostic groups in psychiatric hospitals from 2004 to 2019 among a total of 1,038,239 admissions. RESULTS: The proportion of cases affected by coercive measures dropped significantly from 28.4 to 10.5% in patients with ICD-10 F0 disorders, while rates in patients with other diagnoses decreased insignificantly from 7.0 to 5.4%. The cumulated duration of coercive measures per affected case also dropped significantly among patients with F0 disorders, while changes in patients with other diagnoses remained insiginficant. CONCLUSIONS: The use of coercive measures in patients with organic disorders could be reduced by about 50% in a State of 11 million inhabitants within 15 years, while in contrast no substantial reduction occurred among all other diagnostic groups. Specific interventions to reduce coercive interventions seem to be particularly successful for this patient group.

The use of mechanical restraint and seclusion in patients with schizophrenia: a comparison of the practice in Germany and Switzerland.

BACKGROUND: The use of coercive measures is an indicator of the quality of psychiatric inpatient treatment. To date, there is no data available to European comparisons on the incidence of such measures. METHODS: The frequency and duration of mechanical restraint and seclusion on patients with a diagnosis of F2 ICD-10 was analysed in seven German and seven Swiss psychiatric hospitals in the year 2004 using three indicators. Differences between German and Swiss hospitals regarding the indicators were tested for statistical significance using Mann-Whitney-U-tests. RESULTS: 6.6 % (Switzerland) and 10.4 % (Germany) of admissions respectively were affected by mechanical restraint and 17.8 % (Switzerland) and 7.8 % (Germany) respectively by seclusion. Seclusion as well as mechanical restraint per case were applied significantly more often in German than in Swiss hospitals and were of significantly longer duration in Swiss than in German hospitals. CONCLUSION: The results showed different patterns in the use of seclusion and mechanical restraint across Swiss and German hospitals. For future European research on the use of compulsory measures in routine psychiatric care, there is a need for uniformed definitions, reliable documentation of coercive measures as well as for an identical way of data analysis. To meet these conditions is the first step to achieve European standards for the use of coercive measures.

Diagnosis-related frequency of compulsory measures in 10 German psychiatric hospitals and correlates with hospital characteristics.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the incidence of coercive measures in standard psychiatric care in different psychiatric hospitals. METHODS: We developed a common documentation of mechanical restraint, seclusion, and medication by coercion, and introduced it in 10 participating hospitals. We developed software able to process the data and to calculate four key indicators for routine clinical use. RESULTS: 9.5% of 36,690 cases treated in 2004 were exposed to coercive measures with the highest percentage among patients with organic psychiatric disorders (ICD-10 F0) (28.0%). Coercive measures were applied a mean 5.4 times per case and lasted a mean 9.7 h each. The incidence and duration of coercive measures varied highly between different diagnostic groups and different hospitals. Use of detailed guidelines for seclusion and restraint was associated with a lower incidence of coercive measures. DISCUSSION: Data interpretation should consider numerous confounding factors such as case mix and hospital characteristics. Suggestions on how to cope with ethical and technical problems in the processing of large multi-site data sets in routine clinical use are made.

A nurse-physician co-leadership model in psychiatric hospitals: results of a survey among leading staff members in three sites.

In three psychiatric hospitals in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, a physician-nurse shared leadership model was implemented in 1997 by the hospital management. The whole hospital, departments, and single wards are led each by a leadership team consisting of a physician, psychologist or social worker and a nurse, being responsible for organization, staff, and budgets. The consequences for staff opinion in leadership positions were evaluated. All 165 leading staff members of all professional groups were anonymously interviewed with a questionnaire containing 45 items regarding their satisfaction with this new leadership model. The response rate was 79.4%. Overall, the leading staff members were satisfied with the shared leadership model both in their own clinical practice and in general. Non-medical staff members were significantly more in favour of several aspects of shared leadership than physicians, but even the latter reported to be generally satisfied. However, both professional groups estimated leading positions to be only modestly attractive. The results yield some evidence that the change from traditional leadership models to the physician-nurse shared leadership model may have advantages in the management of psychiatric hospitals.