How do staff and team characteristics relate to ward safety incidents in adult inpatient mental health settings? A protocol for a systematic integrative review

TL;DR

This review aims to understand how staff and team traits affect safety incidents in adult mental health wards.

Contribution

The study introduces a systematic integrative review protocol focusing on staff characteristics and safety in mental health settings.

Findings

The review will explore the relationship between staff/team characteristics and safety incidents.

It will use multiple databases and a mixed methods approach to analyze existing literature.

Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journals and conferences.

Abstract

A neglected area of patient safety research is how the characteristics of mental health staff and teams may influence incidents, specifically, through unintended and harmful consequences of clinical care. While the research literature into patient safety has increased, there is still a need to further consider safety on mental health wards, for example, the role of the staff team in containment and conflict. This review aims to explore the question, ‘How do staff and team characteristics relate to safety incidents in adult inpatient mental health settings?’.

The review will follow Whittemore and Knafl’s integrative review framework. CINAHL, Cochrane, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science will be searched. Literature published after 1999, that includes extractable quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods data exploring the relationship between staff and team characteristics on incidents in adult inpatient mental health settings, will be suitable for inclusion. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool will be used for quality appraisal and data analysis and will comprise data reduction, display and comparison.

No new data or access to participants will be involved in this review. As such, ethical review will not be required. Dissemination will include publication in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at national and international conferences.

This review has been registered on PROSPERO (ref. CRD420251119981; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD420251119981).