Resources for Mitigating Violence in the Health Care Workplace

Photo by Sandy Torchon/Pexels

Violence in health care facilities is on the rise and is yet another factor contributing to current levels of nurse burnout and stress.

The Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) and the American Association for Nursing Leadership (AONL) have jointly provided guiding principles and a toolkit for mitigating violence in the workplace.

In addition, AJN has some important resources on addressing violence against nurses in the workplace at both institutional and situation-specific levels. Click on the following links:

Workplace Violence Training Using Simulation

How an interdisciplinary team at an Ohio health system developed and piloted a training program to address workplace violence, which included classroom learning, simulation training, and hands-on self-defense techniques.

Violence Against Nurses in the Workplace

Consolidated approaches are needed from employers, victims, and the political system.

Workplace Violence

How violence affects health care, which providers are most affected, and what management and staff can do about it.

2022-10-26T11:14:30-04:00October 26th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments

Will your ‘RN’ Name Tag Protect You from Violence?

When I stepped into the entryway, I was met by a group of men, crouched on the floor over a game of craps and shouting excitedly. One of them stood up when he saw me come through the door . . . He dropped the dice, pulled a gun from his waist, and pointed it at my face.

Workplace violence prevention training has become the latest mandatory education module in many hospitals. But what about nurses who work in non-hospital settings? In this month’s Viewpoint, “Workplace Violence Outside the Hospital Setting,” NP and visiting nurse Joanne Schmidt describes the terrifying situation she walked into one day at the start of her morning home visits.

In many community settings, no cameras or security staff.

Schmidt points out that nurses who work in home care, mobile medical vans, school clinics, and other community-based settings may be considerably less safe every single day than those of us who work in relatively protected hospital environments. At least in acute care there are cameras and security staff! […]

2020-02-20T10:55:11-05:00February 20th, 2020|Nursing, nursing stories|1 Comment

Violence Against Health Care Workers: Time for a Zero Tolerance Approach

“Staff should know implicitly that they don’t have to work in an unsafe environment . . . “

The October issue of AJN has two articles that focus on workplace violence. We’ve shared them through social media—and sadly, the response and comments indicate that this information is sorely needed.

One, described in last week’s blog post by clinical editor Betsy Todd, is an article from a health system reporting on how they developed an innovative program to train their employees to deal with violent situations.

‘Staggering numbers.’

The second article (free until Nov. 8) is from nurse and attorney Edie Brous, our contributing editor and coordinator of our legal column, and covers what staff should expect from management in striving for safe workplaces. The numbers of workplace injuries and violent episodes are staggering—the CDC, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other government agencies dealing with health and safety all show significant increases in the last five to ten years. Brous cites many of these data and notes, “The health care industry experiences almost as many violent injuries as all other industries combined.”

Organizations must be proactive . . . and held accountable.

What responsibility do health care organizations have? Brous writes:

“Organizations must be proactive in protecting their workforce and held accountable […]

When a Patient Turns Scary, a Nurse’s Options Aren’t Always Clear

I was leaning over my patient, listening to his lung sounds, when his hand tightened around my wrist. “Why don’t you get in the bed with me?” he said.

Illustration by McClain Moore

That’s the arresting opening of “The Squeeze,” the Reflections essay by nurse Danielle Allen in the September issue of AJN. Such scary experiences happen, as many nurses can attest. What behaviors cross the line? Who decides? After all, nurses put up with lots of challenging behavior. What’s unacceptable, and what constitutes a real safety issue?

Complicating these questions may be the responsibility a nurse feels to not let down their equally burdened nursing colleagues. No one, as Allen writes, wants “to be that nurse. You know, the complainer, overly sensitive, not-a-team-player nurse.”

Allen vividly evokes her encounter with the patient, the varied responses of nursing colleagues later, the emotional aftereffects of the event, and the larger question she finds herself asking about what can be done to keep nurses and other health care workers safe. […]

Preventing Violence Against Nurses

shawnkennedyWhen I graduated from nursing school, my first job was as an ED nurse at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. We’re talking about the 1970s, when drugs were plentiful and plenty of young people used them, especially hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and mescaline. Many times these patients were violent because of “bad trips” or because as the drugs wore off, they “crashed.” Sometimes these patients were accompanied by friends who were just as stoned as they were. I often experienced situations in which patients or visitors became disruptive and sometimes violent, usually because they didn’t understand what was happening to them or because they were scared and paranoid. We had no strategy or guidelines for proceeding—it was pretty much trial and error. Sometimes reasoning worked, but often it didn’t, and then we called security.

Dan Hartley.

Violence in the ED and hospital setting hasn’t gone away. In fact, I just learned from Dan Hartley, an epidemiologist with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), that according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 2003 and 2010 the health care and social […]

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