Personal Narrative: Preventing Workplace Violence

What is instead increasing at an alarming rate in hospitals is violence perpetrated by patients themselves – typically, mental health patients or the elderly.

Haley McCullian, human resources consultant, at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital, is the author of this report. Her role is to identify the problems in the nursing field involving workplace violence in the emergency room. The purpose of this report is to educate the workforce on potential causes, effects, and theories revolving around the current organizational challenge. Workplace violence is a dangerous and complex occupational hazard in today’s health care work environment. It poses challenges for nurses and other health care employees, hospital administration, unions, and health care regulators. Violence from patients, visitors, and coworkers are often tolerated and explained as part of the job in the fast paced, stress filled healthcare care

Safety is an important factor and is a high priority in healthcare. Kelly, Fenwick, Brekke, and Novaco (2015) shared that workplace violence impairs the staff perceptions of safety. However, both patients and staff are affected by workplace violence in many ways, from physical to emotional aspects. There are many reasons why violence occurs, that will be explained later in this paper. The purpose of this paper is to explain the reason and importance of the chosen phenomenon of interest. Moreover, primary and opposing philosophic viewpoints will be discussed, as well as ways of recognizing and utilizing them in nursing. The ways of knowing patterns in nursing and the utilization of these patterns will be explained, pertaining to nursing care.

In reality, there are limited places that violence cannot happen, however, we are often surprised by some of the places violence does take place. One of the places many don’t expect violence to take place is in the hospital. Hospitals are designed to promote safety and provide medical care and nursing treatment for sick or injured people. Unfortunately, on January 12, 2016 a hospital security guard and a police officer endured near-fatal shootings by a drug-affected patient in Nepal. Rachel Olding, the author of an article written February 4, 2016 points out some concerns, thoughts, and ideas for improvement taken from hospital workers who have seen and experienced hospital violence firsthand. Hospitals need to be a place of safety for their patients, staff, and visitors.

Horizontal violence is a hidden pattern of individual behavior in controlling other individual that risk health and safety (Hinchberger, 2009). According to Roche, Duffield and Catling-Paull, violence can be describe as emotional abuse, threat, or actual violence in any health care setting. Although the definition varies according to situations and practice settings, there is agreement that workplace violence has a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of nurses and the delivery of quality nursing care (Hinchberger, 2009). Violence mostly occur in any health care setting, However, it mostly occur in emergency department, waiting room, psychiatric ward and geriatric unit on which people involved psychological situations.

The trade-off is the alternate policy for lateral violence for the nursing staff. This policy alternatives encompass an effective education and training to create awareness of the issues of LV which should not be tolerated or endure by any staff. Holding health care settings accountable and imposing a zero tolerance policy of LV against nursing staff versus previous policy. The OSHA policy on workplace violence failed to specify violence by type. Rather, LV was placed under the blanket of assaults (hazard) at the workplace, which have created a huge loophole for organizations not to take precautionary measures on LV against nurses. In this case, a mandate must be place to give nurses the avenue to reporting LV

The purpose of this review was to discover and asses the effects of healthcare worker directed violence on healthcare providers as well as the effect on patient care. There is sufficient evidence to say that workplace violence perpetrated by patients has a negative effect on the healthcare worker as well as the quality of care they are

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (2000) shows that 48% of all non-fatal work related assaults and acts of violence have occurred in health care and social service settings. Violence against mental health and health care workers has the potential to cause major physical injuries and psychological trauma. In return this poses serious consequences on employers such as increased turnover, medical and psychological care, increased absenteeism, decreased morale, job dissatisfaction, legal issues, and worker burn-out. Agencies and clinicians are encouraged to evaluate and identify the risks that are potential barriers in their agencies. Safety plans need to be implemented and strategized along with re-evaluations on a continuous basis (Taylor, H. 2013).

This research paper discusses workplace violence, specifically the nursing population. Using results from previous research conducted, negative factors impacting a nurse and solutions to this issue are explored. There is a lack of reporting causing this issue of workplace violence to be difficult to determine interventions and bring about public awareness. Looking at the historical background of workplace violence in health care settings, researching the emotional and physical effects on nurses, discovering the effects on work competency, and uncovering the facts on federal legislation of this issue warrants the importance

Introduction Violence within the workplace-affecting employees which reflects on the performance of the organization. Nursing is among many of professions that work in a very high-stress environment posing a high risk for potential of workplace violence. Workplace among the intraprofessional team can be detrimental to patient safety posing a great risk to poor patient outcomes. “Horizontal violence threatens patient safety by damaging workplace relationships and impeding communication among nurses” (IN TEXT CITATION, pg. ). Horizontal violence in nursing is any hostile, aggressive, and harmful behaviour by a nurse or group of nurses toward a co-worker via attitudes, actions, words and/or other behaviours (IN TEXT NURSES PERCEPTION OF HORIZONTAL VIOLENCE).

This is relevant for me as it is for everyone in the healthcare industry. We all want to work in an environment that is free from violence especially in an environment that is already full of stress. It is good to know that there are governmental sanctions for those that violate harassment or violence regulations in the workplace. We still need management to be accountable with those under their direction, disciplining and counseling problem employees as necessary. Because of this threat that constantly hangs over our heads we as nurses should develop a process or plan

Institutions must be aware of the problem and take steps to reduce the risk to their staff and patients. There are laws in place that make assaults on health care workers a felony, this may deter some individuals from causing harm, however some other steps can also occur. To reduce the incidence of violence in a health care setting, policies regarding violence should be implemented. Adopting a written violence prevention program, advising all patients and visitors that violence, verbal and nonverbal threats will not be tolerated, as well as controlling access to facilities other than waiting rooms is a start to decrease violence to the health care worker. Educating staff about the ease of information gathering from sites like facebook, linkedin

totally agree, workplace violence is scary and puts staff at risk of harm. Where I work, we recently went to an open visiting policy, which non of the nurses agree with, and we are the ones having to deal with visitors. This policy went into effect to please the visitors, but what about patient and staff safety. Having visiting hours 24-7, is just ridiculous, in my opinion. Patients are in the hospital because they are ill and need rest. And, why would someone want to come visit a patient at 3am?? I was always taught, you can do the same things before 12a and nothing good happens after 12a. I think having open visiting 24-7, is just asking for problems.

Violence from patients is a serious occupational risk for the local and global workforce, accounting for approximately 900 deaths and 1.7 million nonfatal assaults each year in the United States. In 2007, 15% of all work-related fatalities in the United States were due to assaults and violent acts from patients. In healthcare most incidents related to patient violence against healthcare workers are underreported for a number of reasons. Some reasons are: facility not having a policy that protect the worker, perception that this abuse and its part of the job, or it will not benefit the employer if they report it, and may feel its poor performance on their part as healthcare workers (Gacki-Smith, et al., 2009). . It is estimated that 14% of the total general nursing population have experience symptoms of PTSD which is four times

The results of a national survey of violence in emergency medicine in the U.S. indicated that most of emergency medicine physicians suffered work place violence but that hospital settings only provided a smaller number of violence prevention workshops or provided self-defence training. (Behnam M, Tillotson RD, Davis SM, Hobbs GR. J 2011; 40: 565−79.)