Incidence of Successful Escape among Patients Who Attempted to Abscond from Federal Psychiatric Hospital, Calabar

The striking difference between general and psychiatric patients is acceptance of symptoms and diagnosis. In a psychiatric setting, escape is a recurrent incident which directly reflects the sign of patient’s refusal or rejection of offered treatment. It can pose serious challenges to staff especially nurses who are the custodian of the patients, as well as the hospital management responsible to provision of security apparatus in the hospital. The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence of successful escape among patients who attempted to abscond from Federal Psychiatric Hospital, Calabar within the period covering January, 2016 to July, 2020. The study adopted an expost facto design as data were collected from Nurses’ Reports, Incidence Report and folders of all patients with history of attempted escape. Data collected were presented in frequency table and charts, and descriptive statistics of frequency counts and simple percentage were employed in describing the secondary data collected for this study. Findings revealed that within the period under study, a total of 136 incidence of attempted escape occurred in the Facility with the highest occurrence of 52 (38.2%) witnessed in 2016. Among these patients, 86 (63.2%) successfully escaped from the facility. The highest proportion of 29 (21.3%) patients successfully absconded from hospital in 2016, while the Ward that witnessed the highest incidence of 27 (19.9%) successful escaped within the period was Ward 3. However, the incidence of successful escape within the period was highest among male with diagnosis of substance abuse, bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia; and among those patients who were forcefully admitted with denial of symptoms. Considering the outcome of this study, the researchers recommended among other things that there should be adequate number of nursing staff on duty with quick attention to patients’ overt and covert complaints.