Reducing physical assaults on residents through implementation of project BETA: Best practices in the evaluation and treatment of agitation.

Background And Objectives: We created a multitude of initiatives that were in line with the principles of the BETA (Best Practices in the Evaluation and Treatment of Agitation) guidelines to determine if these initiatives would reduce the physical assault rate by patients on emergency medicine (EM) residents.

Methods: We conducted three cross-sectional surveys of our EM residents (PGY-1 to -3) to determine the incidence of physical assaults by agitated patients at a large county hospital emergency department. These were primarily anonymous REDCap surveys and were administered at the following intervals: (1) pre-BETA initiative implementation, (2) approximately 12 months after implementation, and (3) 5 years postimplementation.