Managing Acute Behavioural Disturbances in the Emergency Department Using the Environment, Policies and Practices: A Systematic Review

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Effective strategies for managing acute behavioural disturbances (ABDs) within emergency departments (EDs) are needed given their rising occurrence and negative impact on safety, psychological wellbeing, and staff turnover. Non-pharmacological interventions for ABD management generally fall into four categories: environmental modifications; policies; practice changes; and education. Our objective was to systematically review the efficacy of strategies for ABD management within EDs that involved changes to environment, architecture, policy and practice.METHODS: We performed systematic searches of CINAHL Plus with Full Text, PsycINFO, MEDLINE, and EMBASE, as well as reference lis..