Nurses' Attitude towards Usage of Physical Restraints in a Teaching Hospital in Singapore

The usage of physical restraints is widespread among the agitated elderly patients in the wards in an acute hospital setting, especially when they have cognitive issues and exhibit challenging behavior. The nurses are the frontline personnel looking after these agitated elderly and often have limited resources in managing these elderly with challenging behavioral symptoms. Physical restraints use serves to restrict mobility and often gives false belief of reducing harm and fall risk among the elderly when supervision is inadequate. Restraining an elderly also gives a sense of false security that patient safety is ensured. Nurses have negative feeling towards restraint use and despite this, when weighed against patient safety, most nurses advocate to restrain their patients.

Keywords: Physical restraint, nurses’ attitude, elderly patients, non-psychiatric.