The practice of restraining children appears to be widespread, but nurses, and others, need to consider the issues carefully, as Pauline Collins explains

Physical restraint of children is a practice used in some clinical settings to ensure success in carrying out therapeutic and diagnostic procedures. Mayton (1) defines restraint as: ‘direct restriction through mechanical means or personal physical force of the limbs, head, or body of a recipient’. A literature search on the subject identified only two articles, one referring to hand over mouth restraint during dental procedures (2), and the other to restraint methods for physically aggressive children in a psychiatric setting (3).