Foxweb
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Assessing the risk of violence in forensic psychiatric patients (Foxweb)
IRAS ID
163962
Contact name
Seena Fazel
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Clinical Trials and Research Governance
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 5 months, 1 days
Research summary
Most forensic psychiatric patients reside in secure hospitals (also called high, medium, and low secure units) where they are managed by multidisciplinary mental health teams. Such patients are usually admitted from three main areas - (a) court after a criminal offence, (b) other psychiatric units where they have been violent or at risk of violence, and (c) occasionally directly from prison. Such patients cost around four times other psychiatric patients, and part of the reason for this is the high rates of violent incidents to staff and other patients in such units. The current research project builds on work in the Department of Psychiatry, Oxford, that has developed a text- and web-based way to capture regular patient information. For the purposes of this project, we intend to develop a system for clinical staff to collect information on risk factors for violence from inpatients using a web-based interface and an application that has already been developed by the OxText team for other projects. In addition, information on violent incidents that are routinely collected by clinical staff (and uploaded onto a Trust-wide databased) will be extracted and linked to the Foxweb. This would enable information on a particular individual's risk factors from Foxweb to be compared with that patient's subsequent violent and other serious incidents to see what risk factors are most predictive of violence in forensic psychiatric patients.
REC name
South Central - Oxford A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/SC/0051
Date of REC Opinion
18 Feb 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion