A Quality Improvement Project Using Verbal De-Escalation to Reduce Seclusion and Patient Aggression in an Inpatient Psychiatric Unit.

The use of seclusion is controversial and has been deemed an encroachment on human rights and dignity which can cause psychological trauma and physical injury to patients in the psychiatric setting. This quality improvement project used a quasi-experimental design to implement the TeamSTEPPS educational program, an evidenced-based program to inform nurses about verbal de-escalation to reduce patient aggressive behavior that can lead to patient seclusion. The targeted patient population included all patients admitted 2 months prior to initiation of Team STEPPS (n = 388) and 2 months following completion of the education modules (n = 342).