Nurse-led crisis interventions can reduce restraints, injuries

A systematic review of the nursing and biomedical literature on the use of psychiatric rapid response teams (RRTs) in non-psychiatric hospital settings found that RRTs show promise in reducing adverse outcomes from psychiatric events in this setting. The researchers found a correlation between nurse-led, interdisciplinary psychiatric RRTs and reductions in security calls, restraint use and staff injuries. RRTs that involved education, debriefing and role modeling appeared to “increase staff behavioral management skills and eventually reduced the need for RRTs.” The literature on RRTs is relatively recent, beginning in 2010, and is based solely on quality improvement and implementation studies. (JONA article, June 2019)