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Elopement Precautions

By Dennis Brumbles posted 07-16-2010 04:04 PM

  
We're looking at revisiting our practice concerning elopements and elopement precautions. I'd love to hear what other institutions are doing. What your assessment tools are, the restrictions (if any) you take when someone is deemed a elopement risk? I should say that we are a locked unit and do take involuntary patients.
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Collette Hendler
01-18-2021 05:27 AM

I'm revisiting this topic. Are there any new elopement tools that have validity that you could share.

Michael Fitzgerald
07-22-2010 02:43 AM

Dennis, great subject. Elopements have taken on cataclysmic impact with Sentinel Event risk in a litigious environment. Possibly for the best---but the imprisonment model of psychiatric inpatient settings downgrades the therapeutic environment. For this reason, assessment is the key as you have correctly identified. The expectation for elopement prevention in entirety is probably unrealistic but efforts at reduction must be made.
There is no "elopement tool" that has validity---it gets down to a clinical formulation based on strength of therapeutic relationship. And most importantly---the ability to provide an immediate safe section of treatment with prevention and subsequent regain of freedom as clinical improvement is shown.