Psychiatric nurses' attitudes toward aggressive psychotic patients

ABSTRACT

Aggression by mentally ill patients has been recognized as a significant and increasing problem in psychiatric settings. Inpatient aggressive behaviour represents a serious threat to the safety of staff, and it provokes strong emotional reactions among staff members Nurses' attitudes towards patient aggression may influence their behavior toward patients. This study aims to explore psychiatric nurses' attitudes toward aggressive psychotic patients. The study was conducted at EL-Mamoura Hospital for Psychiatric Medicine in Alexandria. Subjects of the study comprised all staff nurses working at the psychotic inpatients wards. The data of the study were collected using the Attitude toward aggression scale [ATAS], which comprise five subscales namely, offensive. Destructive, intrusive, communicative, and protective, and aggressive incident, The results of this study revealed that there is a negative attitude toward patients aggression. A negative correlation between the age of nurses, their years of experience and offensive, communicative and intrusive attitude, i.e. the younger the age and fewer years of experience associated, with more negative attitude toward aggression, but no statistical significant difference was found. But in contrast, the protective attitude had a positive correlation with age and years of experience, i.e. viewing the aggression may exhibit to defend about personal and emotional space