SCREENING FOR RISK OF INPATIENT VIOLENCE - VALIDATION OF AN ACTUARIALTOOL

A screening checklist for assessing the risk of violence at the time o f psychiatric hospitalization was developed. Checklist items and a cut off point for low versus high risk of violence were selected based on a previous study of statistical prediction of violence. Application of the checklist to a new sample of 338 patients admitted to a universit y-based inpatient unit revealed promising results in identifying patie nts who later displayed aggressive behavior in the hospital, as indica ted by its positive predictive value (59.0%), negative predictive valu e (70.6%), sensitivity (57.2%), specificity (70.0%), total predictive value (65.4%), and likelihood ratio (1.97). The results suggest the po tential value of incorporating actuarial methods in the evaluation of violence risk.