Evaluation of the Manifestation of Patient Aggresivity in an Emergency Department
Evaluation of the Manifestation of Patient Aggresivity in an Emergency Department
The main objective of this study is to determine the average total number of violent events per observation period occurring in the emergency department at the Nîmes University Hospital. The list of violent events is pre-determined and based on a series of interviews with emergency department staff.
This observational study will take place via a representative sample of 90 observation periods. One observation period consists of 7.5 consecutive hours between two team rotations during the day and 10 consecutive hours at night. These observational periods include the moment when health-care teams are debriefed during a shift-change, which we suspect to be a sensitive time point.
Observation periods are randomly selected over a period of 1 year, and stratified for time of day (morning, afternoon, evening), day of the week and month.
The secondary objectives of the observation phase are to identify factors associated with the average number of violent events per work period (number of patients attending the emergency department, time of staff debriefing during shift change, time of day, week or weekend, individual patient characteristics (gender, age, patient or accompanying a patient, waiting time from arrival in the emergency room to emergency consultation, reason for consultation), characteristics of victims of violence, characteristics of the health care team ...)
The anticipated total number of violent events is unknown at the beginning of the study; we indicated '50' as a guess.
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria: