Psychiatric illness and resident assaults among veterans in long-term care facilities.
This article describes a quality improvement program to reduce the prevalence of physical assaults in a university-affiliated, 234-bed Veterans Affairs (VA) long-term care (LTC) facility, which experienced a rise in the number of physical assaults to >4 per 1,000 bed days of care in four LTC units. Analysis of 55 events (29 patients) at this VA LTC site during 2007 revealed 19 resident assailants (8% total population), 10 victims, and 30% repeat events. Of the residents who exhibited assaultive behavior, 44% had dementia and 32% had schizophrenia as a major diagnosis. Following a process improvement plan, new occurrence assaultive behaviors declined from >4 to <1 per 1,000 bed days and remained low during 5-year follow up.
James
J
Powers
Harry
H
Gwirtsman
Scott
S
Erwin
D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients; D008134:Long-Term Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D014728:Veterans; D014754:Violence