Reducing Physical Restraint Use in the Medical Behavioral Unit.

Objectives: Children with behavioral health conditions often experience agitation when admitted to children's hospitals. Physical restraint should be used only as a last resort for patient agitation because it endangers the physical and psychological safety of patients and employees. At the medical behavioral unit (MBU) in our children's hospital, we aimed to decrease the weekly rate of physical restraint events per 100 MBU patient-days, independent of patient race, ethnicity, or language, from a baseline mean of 14.