Inappropriate restraint practices in Australian teaching hospitals.

The use of restraints in contemporary healthcare represents an ethical problem to nurses and nursing. This paper describes a point prevalence study undertaken to examine the patterns of restraint use in an Australian teaching hospital. The objectives were: to clearly define restraint; establish its prevalence; the reasons for its use; and, to describe staffing levels in relation to restraint rates. Of the 256 patients who were observed, 9.4% were restrained. A third of the patients aged 85 years and over were restrained. The results support a previous Australian study that reported restraint rates of between 8.5% and 18.5% in acute hospitals.