American researchers at Point Loma Nazarene University and Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego, Calif., studied more than 2,000 patients admitted to an American acute-care hospital over a five-month period.
The study found that 56 of the 2,063 patients (3 percent) were involved in one or more of the violent incidents. These included 35 episodes of verbal abuse, 26 physical attacks, 15 threats of physical attack and 12 incidents where an emergency call went out to security personnel.
The tool, called the Aggressive Behavior Risk Assessment Tool, predicts patients with a tendency to become violent. For example, less than 1 percent of patients with an ABRAT rating of zero became violent, compared with 41 percent of those with a rating of two or more. Eight percent of patients with a score of one became violent.
The five most common predictors of violence were confusion/cognitive impairment, anxiety, agitation, shouting/demanding and a history of physical aggression.
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