Self-Defense Training for Psychiatric Residents

Study Title:

Preparing psychiatric residents for workplace violence: Evaluating the impact of proactive self-defense and situational awareness training

Study Goals:

• To assess psychiatric residents’ perceptions of violence in the inpatient psychiatric unit

• To investigate whether proactive self-defense and situational awareness training could increase psychiatric residents’ self-confidence and perceived ability to handle patient aggression

Key Contributions:

• Contributed to the literature review

• Edited/proofread the manuscript

• Revised the manuscript figures

Methods:

• Quantitative survey immediately before, one week, and one month after the training

• Distributions of demographic characteristics were analyzed across time periods and compared using Fisher’s exact test

• The odds of scoring above 5 on the survey at the one-week and one-month posttraining intervals were evaluated using logistic regression

Participants:

• 22 psychiatry residents

Findings:

• Psychiatric residents had realistic expectations about exposure to violence, with 43% expressing concern about their medical rotation due to fear of violence.

• However, only 14% felt that this fear negatively impacted their clinical performance.

• While most residents felt underprepared to manage violence in healthcare settings, 90% reported that the training improved their confidence.

• Self-assurance also increased significantly, rising from 38% before the training to 83% after completion.

Implications:

• Because self-defense and situational awareness training is associated with improved confidence in psychiatric residents when interacting with violent patients, healthcare settings should fund these training programs for their staff.

• Educators of healthcare professionals should consider incorporating self-defense training into their curricula to ensure that their students are prepared to perform their clinical responsibilities.

Future Research:

• Future research should investigate whether psychiatric residents who receive self-defense training can apply their learned skills during live instances of violent patient encounters.

• Studies should examine whether the behavior of self-defense-trained psychiatric residents significantly differs from that of untrained psychiatric residents.

Citation:

Mishra, A., Ranjan, S., Nguyen, N. K., Fatade, O., Trivedi, K., Memon, Z., Banning, G., Jafri, A., & Peltier, M. (2026). Preparing psychiatric residents for workplace violence: Evaluating the impact of proactive self-defense and situational awareness training. Journal of Healthcare Management. http://www.doi.org/10.1097/JHM-D-24-00249