Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology

, Volume 46, Issue 9, pp 893–901 | Cite as

Staff attitudes and thoughts about the use of coercion in acute psychiatric wards

  • Tonje Lossius Husum
  • Johan Haakon Bjørngaard
  • Arnstein Finset
  • Torleif Ruud
Original Paper
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

Purpose

Previous research has shown considerable differences in how often coercive measures are used in mental health care between groups of patients, institutions and geographical areas. Staff attitudes towards the use of coercion have been put forward as a factor that may influence these differences.

Method

This study investigates the attitudes to coercion in 651 staff members within 33 Norwegian acute psychiatric wards. The newly developed Staff Attitude to Coercion Scale was used to measure staff attitudes.

Results

Multilevel analysis showed that there was significant variance among wards, estimated to be about 8–11% of the total variance on three scales.

Conclusions

Despite substantial differences in attitudes among wards, most of the variance could be attributed to individual staff level factors. Hence, it is likely that staff attitudes are influenced, to a large extent, by each individual staff member’s personality and values.

Keywords

Staff attitudes Coercion Acute psychiatric wards Multilevel analysis 
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2010

Authors and Affiliations

  • Tonje Lossius Husum
    • 1
  • Johan Haakon Bjørngaard
    • 1
    • 4
  • Arnstein Finset
    • 2
  • Torleif Ruud
    • 3
    • 5
  1. 1.SINTEF Health Service ResearchOsloNorway
  2. 2.Institute of PsychiatryUniversity of OsloOsloNorway
  3. 3.Division of Mental Health ServicesAkershus University HospitalOsloNorway
  4. 4.Department of Community Medicine and General PracticeNorwegian University of Science and TechnologyOsloNorway
  5. 5.Institute of Clinical MedicineUniversity of OsloOsloNorway

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