TY - JOUR
T1 - Control
T2 - Patients' aggression in psychiatric settings
AU - Drach-Zahavy, Anat
AU - Goldblatt, Hadass
AU - Granot, Michal
AU - Hirschmann, Shmuel
AU - Kostintski, Hava
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article: Grants were received from the University of Haifa, Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences, and the University of Haifa Research Authority.
PY - 2012/1
Y1 - 2012/1
N2 - Psychiatric patient assaults on staff are a serious problem, affecting staff, patients, and organizations. To understand the etiology of aggressive events, researchers have documented characteristics of aggressive patients, their victims, and to a lesser degree, the patient-provider interaction. Missing in the literature is how staff's different perceptions of aggressive incidents might impact their reactions. In this study, we conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 11 health care professionals working in a psychiatric ward in one Israeli psychiatric hospital. Through content analysis, we revealed two main themes: patients' and providers' controllability over patients' aggression. From the intersection of these two themes, four prototypes of the aggressive encounter emerged: the power struggle, the therapeutic encounter, inverse power relations, and victim-to-victim encounters, each distinctively characterized by different emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses. We discuss our findings in light of attribution theory, which carries important theoretical and practical implications for handling aggression.
AB - Psychiatric patient assaults on staff are a serious problem, affecting staff, patients, and organizations. To understand the etiology of aggressive events, researchers have documented characteristics of aggressive patients, their victims, and to a lesser degree, the patient-provider interaction. Missing in the literature is how staff's different perceptions of aggressive incidents might impact their reactions. In this study, we conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 11 health care professionals working in a psychiatric ward in one Israeli psychiatric hospital. Through content analysis, we revealed two main themes: patients' and providers' controllability over patients' aggression. From the intersection of these two themes, four prototypes of the aggressive encounter emerged: the power struggle, the therapeutic encounter, inverse power relations, and victim-to-victim encounters, each distinctively characterized by different emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses. We discuss our findings in light of attribution theory, which carries important theoretical and practical implications for handling aggression.
KW - health care professionals
KW - psychiatry
KW - risk, perceptions
KW - violence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=83455205640&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1049732311414730
DO - 10.1177/1049732311414730
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C2 - 21743032
AN - SCOPUS:83455205640
SN - 1049-7323
VL - 22
SP - 43
EP - 53
JO - Qualitative Health Research
JF - Qualitative Health Research
IS - 1
ER -