Clinical implications and conclusion
By nurses allowing and encouraging clients in psychiatric facilities to use the comfort room as a place to privately self-manage anxiety and distress, they could effectively prevent a potential negative outcome, such as the use of seclusion or restraint or staff and client injuries. Seclusion and restraint use and events that result in injuries are disruption and stressful to the unit milieu. These same events could create fear, and distrust among both clients and staff, which creates difficulty in promoting a safe and secure unit.
The author believes that if nurses encourage the use of use of the comfort room when a client first feels distressed or anxious, negative outcomes could be decreased, and thus, the use of seclusion and/or restraint could be prevented. Self-management empowers clients and promotes autonomy on their road to recovery. Comfort rooms should be considered an important tool in the goal toward the reduction of seclusion and restraint use.