Reduction in the use of seclusion in a high secure hospital in the UK: a retrospective analysis

Methods The evaluation was conducted in Ashworth Hospital, UK. For the purposes of this paper the following strategies were identified post-hoc and analyzed as the independent variables namely, progressively lowering the threshold for a multi-disciplinary group review, providing targeted staff training dependent on patient needs and increasing the clinical staff-patient ratio. A multiple regression analysis was applied to monthly seclusion data covering the period from January 2002 – January 2006. As the total hospital census declined during the four-year period the monthly data for total hours of seclusion over the period divided by the inpatient census for that month served as the dependent variable.