The purposes of this study were to develop an educational program to reduce the use of physical restraints for caregivers in geriatric hospitals and to evaluate the effects of the program on cargivers' knowledge, attitude and nursing practice related to the use of physical restraints.

A quasi experimental study with a non-equivalent control group pretest-posttest design was used. Participants were recruited from two geriatric hospitals. Eighteen caregivers were assigned to the experimental group and 20 to the control group. The data were collected prior to the intervention and at 6 weeks after the intervention through the use of self-administered questionnaires. Descriptive statistics, χ² test, Fisher's exact probability test, and Mann-Whitney U test were used to analyze the data.

After the intervention, knowledge about physical restraints increased significantly in experimental group compared to the control group. However, there were no statistically significant differences between the groups for attitude and nursing practice involving physical restraints.

Findings indicate that it is necessary to apply knowledge acquired through educational programs to nursing practice to reduce the use of physical restraints. User friendly guidelines for physical restraints, administrative support of institutions, and multidisciplinary approaches are required to achieve this goal.

This was a methodological research to develop an instrument to assess the emotional response of family members of physically restrained patients.

A primary instrument with 68 questions was developed based on literature review and semi-structured interviews with family members. A group of experts revised individual questions and removed 4 irrelevant questions. This secondary instrument, then, was tested with 199 family members of physically restrained patients in intensive care units of a university hospital. The validity and reliability of the instrument were tested by factor analysis.

After item analysis, 3 questions with a correlation coefficient under .30 were discarded and the questions with a factor loading under .45 on Varimax Rotation were also removed. After factor analysis on the final 37 questions, 7 factors were identified; avoidance, shock, helplessness, grudge, depression, anxiousness, and acceptance. The total variance explained was 55.63%. The reliability of this instrument was 0.93 of Cronbach's alpha.

This instrument was statistically reliable and valid to measure family’s emotional response to physical restraints of the patients. This instrument can be useful in assessing the effects of nursing interventions for family members of restrained patients.