Clinical Trials Logo

Clinical Trial Summary

The Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) is an under researched area of clinical practice, largely in the management of acutely agitated and violent patients. The goal of this pilot randomized clinical trial (RCT) is to assess the benefit of medically monitoring patients that present with extreme agitation and/or violent behaviour to PES. Placing them in physical restraints and immediately administering chemical restraint, will enable medical monitoring of these potentially medically unstable patients. Investigators believe that this practice will provide safer management of patients, reduce risk to staff and other patients, reduce risk of undiagnosed medical conditions that underly the agitation, and increase clinical management and quality of care. Patients that come into the Emergency Department that are agitated and violent, where verbal-deescalation will not suffice, will be randomly treated with either immediate placement in seclusion (current practice) or be placed in physical restraints and given chemical restraint (as outlined in the BETA project guidelines). The same time interval assessments will be performed on both groups of patients including; medical monitoring and agitation scale assessment. Data will also be collected on number of violent episodes, code whites, required increase in the use of physical restraints, length of intervention, and more. This assessment will enable a comparison between the current practice and the proposed practice to establish evidence based clinical guidelines for the management of acute agitation in PES, where de-escalation techniques are ineffective and the lack of medical monitoring is harmful to the patient and can negatively effect their outcome. In order to best assess the importance of medical monitoring for such patients, a pilot study must be performed to assess the feasibility of such a phase III RCT study.


Clinical Trial Description

n/a


Study Design

Allocation: Randomized, Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment, Masking: Open Label, Primary Purpose: Prevention


Related Conditions & MeSH terms


NCT number NCT02512705
Study type Interventional
Source St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton
Contact Hava Starkman, BScH
Phone 905-522-4941
Email hava.starkman@gmail.com
Status Not yet recruiting
Phase N/A
Start date September 2015
Completion date April 2016

See also
  Status Clinical Trial Phase
Terminated NCT03246620 - Oral Olanzapine Versus Haloperidol or Diazepam Phase 4
Not yet recruiting NCT05803642 - A Study of Olanzapine in Patients With Acute Agitation Phase 3
Completed NCT03624322 - Safety and Tolerability of INP105 (Olanzapine by I231 POD® Device) Nasal Spray in Healthy Volunteers - SNAP 101 Phase 1