Nurses Attitudes Towards the Use of Restraints in the Critical Care Setting

The use of restraints is especially prevalent in critical care units in order to decrease patients’ interference with their medical care. Although there are quality improvement studies to reduce the frequency of restraints, nurses are reluctant to implement this into their practice when considering restrint safety. Our research question states, in critical care patients, how does the nurse’s attitude and experience affect the use of restraints? There is limited education provided to nurses regarding the determinants of restraints in the acute care setting. We conducted a systematic review of literature to investigate how the attitudes of nurses affect patient outcomes in relation to restraints. We developed a practice protocol to explore the differences in the mindset of nurses and how these attitudes affected the decisions of nurses within a critical care unit