Incidence of Successful Escape among Patients Who Attempted to Abscond from Federal Psychiatric Hospital, Calabar
- January 1, 2021
- Posted by: RSIS Team
- Categories: IJRISS, Medical Sciences, Nursing
International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue XII, December 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186
Umoh, Edet O. (PhD) & Endra, Michael E.
Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Calabar, Nigeria
Abstract:-The striking difference between general and psychiatric patients is acceptance of symptoms and diagnosis. In a psychiatric setting, escape is a recurrent incident which directly reflects the sign of patient’s refusal or rejection of offered treatment. It can pose serious challenges to staff especially nurses who are the custodian of the patients, as well as the hospital management responsible to provision of security apparatus in the hospital. The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence of successful escape among patients who attempted to abscond from Federal Psychiatric Hospital, Calabar within the period covering January, 2016 to July, 2020. The study adopted an expost facto design as data were collected from Nurses’ Reports, Incidence Report and folders of all patients with history of attempted escape. Data collected were presented in frequency table and charts, and descriptive statistics of frequency counts and simple percentage were employed in describing the secondary data collected for this study. Findings revealed that within the period under study, a total of 136 incidence of attempted escape occurred in the Facility with the highest occurrence of 52 (38.2%) witnessed in 2016. Among these patients, 86 (63.2%) successfully escaped from the facility. The highest proportion of 29 (21.3%) patients successfully absconded from hospital in 2016, while the Ward that witnessed the highest incidence of 27 (19.9%) successful escaped within the period was Ward 3. However, the incidence of successful escape within the period was highest among male with diagnosis of substance abuse, bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia; and among those patients who were forcefully admitted with denial of symptoms. Considering the outcome of this study, the researchers recommended among other things that there should be adequate number of nursing staff on duty with quick attention to patients’ overt and covert complaints.
Introduction
The striking difference between general and psychiatric patients is acceptance of symptoms and diagnosis. Escape is recurrent incident in psychiatric setting making management to declare facility insecure to relatives hence requiring signing of disclaimant form that if their relative escape due to un-reliance of available security measures, they should not be held liable.
Psychiatric patients are the kind of patients whose behavior does not conform to acceptance of others in the society. According Townsend (2011), they are individuals who are unable to make informed decision over their treatment, could cause harm to self or others, and could not perform basic roles necessary to provide personal needs to sustain health and safety. Desire to resolve above feature warrants family or corporate body to elect psychiatric treatment for the individual whereas he/she has no concern. Abscondment or escape is a sign of patient’s refusal or rejection
