Daffern Michael, Mayer Maggie, Martin Trish
Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health (Forensicare), Fairfield, Victoria, Australia.
Int J Ment Health Nurs. 2006 Jun;15(2):93-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1447-0349.2006.00408.x.
Gender balance in acute psychiatric inpatient units remains a contentious issue. In terms of maintaining staff and patient safety, 'balance' is often considered by ensuring there are 'sufficient' male nurses present on each shift. In an ongoing programme of research into aggression, the authors investigated reported incidents of patient aggression and examined the gender ratio on each shift over a 6-month period. Contrary to the popular notion that a particular gender ratio might have some relationship with the likelihood of aggressive incidents, there was no statistically significant difference in the proportion of male staff working on the shifts when there was an aggressive incident compared with the shifts when there was no aggressive incident. Further, when an incident did occur, the severity of the incident bore no relationship with the proportion of male staff working on the shift. Nor did the gender of the shift leader have an impact on the decision to seclude the patient or the likelihood of completing an incident form following an aggressive incident. Staff confidence in managing aggression may be influenced by the presence of male staff. Further, aspects of prevention and management may be influenced by staff gender. However, results suggest there is no evidence that the frequency or severity of aggression is influenced by staff gender ratio.
急性精神科住院病房的性别平衡仍然是一个有争议的问题。在维护工作人员和患者安全方面，“平衡”通常被认为是通过确保每个班次都有“足够”的男护士来实现的。在一项正在进行的关于攻击行为的研究项目中，作者调查了报告的患者攻击事件，并在6个月的时间里检查了每个班次的性别比例。与特定性别比例可能与攻击事件的可能性存在某种关系这一普遍观念相反，发生攻击事件时上班的男性工作人员比例与未发生攻击事件时上班的男性工作人员比例在统计学上没有显著差异。此外，当事件确实发生时，事件的严重程度与当班男性工作人员的比例无关。当班领导的性别也不会影响隔离患者的决定或攻击事件发生后填写事件报告表的可能性。男性工作人员的在场可能会影响工作人员处理攻击行为的信心。此外，预防和管理方面可能会受到工作人员性别的影响。然而，结果表明，没有证据表明攻击行为的频率或严重程度会受到工作人员性别比例的影响。
