Background: There is a growing interest in developing guidelines. The French Agency for accreditation and Evaluation (Anaes) published in October 2000 guidelines on the use of restraint in geriatric care settings because in spite of the risks this practice remains widespread in that type of care setting. A multifaceted intervention was conducted in a Parisian geriatric hospital in order to improve the implementation of the published guidelines. An epidemiological study was conducted to assess the outcomes of this intervention.
Methods: The intervention consisted in distributing educational materials and a specific prescription sheet, and in staff training sessions. A time series study was used to assess outcomes. The three time points were: before the intervention, just after the end of the intervention and one year later. Two dimensions were studied: implementation of the guidelines using markers collected from patients' charts and restraining practices noted in an observational study of hospitalized patients.
Results: The results of the study suggest that five recommendations were followed better: restraint prescription (8.7 to 57.4%), writing in the patient chart the reasons for restraining (3.5 to 35.3%), follow-up prescription, assessment of potential benefits and risks for the patient and patient information (0% to 19-34%). Nevertheless, the prevalence of restraint and of devices employed (around 70%) remained unchanged after the intervention. The various outcomes of the intervention might be explained by the guidelines themselves, which were variably practical or precise. Moreover, the effect of certain factors directly related with the use of restraint, a routine practice strongly supported by myths about its efficacy, as well as factors related to intervention design may merely have prevented any decrease in the use of restraint practices.
Conclusion: Multifaceted intervention can favour implementation of certain national guidelines such as prescribing restraint, but can also fail in stimulating the implementation of others such as decreasing the prevalence of restraint in geriatric practice. Therefore the next intervention should emphasize alternatives to physical restraint practices.