Weekly and daily variations in patient-staff incidents in psychiatric acute wards

Staff injuries from patient-staff incidents are important work environment problems in psychiatric hospitals. The present study aims to establish time-patterns of injuries and to relate these to the routines of a psychiatric acute ward. In a psychiatric acute ward in Norway the staff recorded the time and the day of all injuries including patient-staff incidents from 1990 to June 1997, using the Staff Observation Aggression Scale (SOAS). Three hundred and thirty-seven reports of incidents that at least resulted in pain were included. The daily routines of the ward were also mapped. We found more injuries on weekdays than on weekends. On weekdays, but not on weekends, there were more injuries between 1000 h and 1400 h than during the rest of the day. The temporal variation in patient-staff incidents during the week and during the day seems to be influenced by the work routines of the ward. We find the SOAS useful for analysing variations in frequency of aggressive behaviour among psychiatric patients and to establish relationships between work routines and increased risk of injuries.