Assessment of aggressive behaviours on an adolescent inpatient psychiatric ward in Poland using the SOAS-R tool – preliminary report

Purpose:
The aim of the study was to analyse the incidence of aggressive behaviour in patients of an adolescent psychiatric ward towards medical and nursing personnel and to assess the usefulness of the tools used by the authors to describe the incident itself. Currently, Polish literature and practice lack such scales. The tool used in the study was the Polish version of the Staff Observation Aggression Scale-Revised (SOAS-R).

Methods:
The study used the results of 71 questionnaires completed by the staff of the adolescent inpatient psychiatric ward after episodes of aggression in patients in the period from August 2015 to August 2019.

Results:
The most frequent object of aggression was medical and nursing personnel (57.8%), self-harm was less frequent (4.6%). Other patients (7.1%) or objects (16.2%) were relatively rarely the victims. The most common form of aggression was aggression using hands. It occurred in 80% of cases. It turned out that half of the aggressive behaviour using hands (punches, blows) took place between 2:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.

Conclusions:
SOAS-R seems to be an effective tool in incident assessment both at the level of causes and, what seems most important, the consequences of aggressive behaviour. It can also be used to analyse staffing at particular times of the day, week, or even month. The phenomenon of aggression requires more precise, constant, and time-based observation which allows the implementation of appropriate procedures and the overcoming of many stereotypes related to aggressive behaviour and its impact on the relationship between the medical and nursing staff and the patient.