Broadmoor is a high secure psychiatric hospital divided into personality disorder (PD) and mental illness (MI) pathways. Whenever an incident occurs, it should be recorded. To better understand which factors influence the rate of incidents, such as diagnosis or intervention by medical and psychological staff, we examined the difference in the number of incidents recorded on weekdays versus weekends, ward round (WR) versus non-WR days and the PD versus MI pathways.

All incidents recorded over a one-year period (3.11.2014–2.11.2015) were examined. Extraneous incidents were excluded, leaving subgroups of “aggressive” (physical and verbal) and “physical” (excluding verbal) incidents which were analysed. Data were adjusted for the difference in number of beds in each pathway.

Of the 2369 incident reports included, more were recorded per day on weekdays than weekends, with little difference on WR versus non-WR days. The rates of both types of incidents were similar on both PD and MI admission wards, although the rate of “physical” incidents was 2.6 times higher and “aggressive” incidents 3.3 times higher in PD compared to MI rehabilitation wards.

The findings suggest the presence of medical and psychological staff during the week, and possibly the requirements they place on patients, may increase the rate of incidents within the hospital. Despite comparable rates on admission, MI rehabilitation wards have far fewer incidents than PD rehab wards, which may reflect the more intractable nature of PD versus MI. More work is required to confirm these findings.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.