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Perhaps due to the complexities of the problem of aggression and violence, and to ethical issues relating to the mental health areas where much of the work is focused, it is the perspective of staff working in those areas that is most commonly sought in research studies. In contrast, tools to examine the patient's view are rare. In this paper Joy Duxbury describes the piloting and development of a new tool, which aimed to survey the views of both patients and staff about the broader approaches used to manage patient aggression. This became the 'Management of Aggression and Violence Attitude Scale' (MAVAS), and the testing of this tool is the focus of this paper
key words
* aggression
* violence
* patients: attitudes and perceptions
* staff: attitudes, attitude scale
Introduction
Until recently, the problem of patient aggression and violence in Healthcare has been a neglected area of investigation. Literature on this subject has expanded greatly since 1988 when only 32 articles existed (Poster and Ryan 1993), whereas to date there are more than 1,000 papers on the same topic (Cutliffe and McKenna 1999). It is evident that concerns prevail about escalating levels of patient violence towards nurses (Delaney et al 2001) and as a result, research that aims to examine multiple perspectives from a variety of health care settings is more extensive. In addition, calls for the evaluation of present practices are noticeably on the increase, and a number of management issues have emerged (Whittington 2000).
An extensive review of the literature related to managing patient aggression and violence in healthcare demonstrates that there is a growing interest in this area. However, the exploration of client's and practitioners' respective views is less evident within the literature. Such work as has been done has focused on specific approaches such as seclusion, and has commonly relied on interview material (Meehan et al 2000). Furthermore, the staff perspective is most commonly sought, whereas tools that might examine the patient's view are rare. This, it is argued, is largely due to the complexities of the problem itself and to ethical issues relating to the psychiatric arena where much of the work is focused (Whittington 2000). It appears that a tool does not exist to examine attitudes about...