Abstract: Objective: To investigate the effects of Health Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (HFMEA) on preventing violent behaviors in schizophrenic patients in hospital. Methods: Patients with schizophrenia from four wards of a third grade specialized hospital in Jiangsu Province were recruited using convenient sampling method. 953 patients admitted from January to December 2016 before the implementation of HFMEA were recruited as the control group, and 884 patients admitted from January to December 2017 after the implementation of HFMEA were selected as the experimental group. The HFMEA mode was used to analyze the process of schizophrenia-related violence to find out the main failure modes and related causes of potential risks, and measures to solve problems with top priority were improved and evaluated. Results: The incidence of violence decreased from 40.50% to 32.58% after the implementation of HFMEA, and the difference between the two groups was statistically significant (χ2=12.398, P<0.001). The risk value of violent behaviors significantly decreased with a statistical significance (P<0.05). Conclusion: HFMEA can be used to prospectively evaluate the risk of violent behaviors in schizophrenic patients in hospital to prevent the occurrence of such behaviors, which will effectively reduce the incidence of violent incidents.

Key words: Health Failure Mode and Effect Analysis; schizophrenia; violence