Workplace Violence In Mental And General Healthcare Settings

Author : Susan Mamaril
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 72 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (954 download)

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Download or read book Workplace Violence and the Importance of Developing and Following Current Policies in the Emergency Department written by Susan Mamaril and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Workplace violence (WPV) is a serious problem in the healthcare setting, especially in the emergency department (ED) against nurses, sitters, security, and other ED staff. A zero-tolerance for violence policy should be enforced in every ED. There are various causes for WPV some are communication problems, patients under the influence of drugs or alcohol, requesting narcotics with the request denied, long wait times, and psychiatric patients who have not been taking their medications are manic, psychotic, and unaware of their behavior. Violence comes in different forms, verbal abuse, physical abuse, non-physical abuse, bullying, and sexual harassment. The perpetrator can be the patient, patient's family, or visitors and violence can come without warning. Many times there are cues when the perpetrator is starting to escalate from verbal abuse to aggression to physical violence. The importance is when the nurse sees the cues security should be called to help de-escalate the situation. When a patient or visitor becomes verbally abusive or aggressive in the early stage; this causes one or more nurses and security to deal with the situation which sometimes develops into violence and a take down into restraints. When this occurs, other patients are scared, and their care is delayed because the nurse has to deal with the abusive patient, sometimes taking approximately a half hour. This can affect the other patient's outcomes, such as leaving them in pain for a long period of time, delay of antibiotics in a septic patient or pneumonia patient and other psychiatric and detox patients can become anxious and also start to become aggressive or if they are waiting to be transferred to a psychiatric facility (PF) could attempt to leave. Education for every employee on WPV policies, WPV training using the Anchored Instruction Theory (AIT), and watching a video of real situations of WPV followed by role playing of each type of situation, will help the staff on how to handle WPV. There should be annual training and individual training when requested. Because of the increased volume of psychiatric patients, detox, and under the influence of drugs or alcohol patients, many nurses and other staff do not feel safe in their work environment. Security officers should pay particular attention to activities in the department because a patient or visitor could become violent or use a concealed weapon at any time.