August 10, 2017, 2:00 PM ET: Workplace Violence in Health Care Can’t Be the Norm
- Pat Folcarelli, RN, PhD, Interim Vice President, Silverman Institute for Health Care Quality and Safety, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC)
- Marsha Mauer, RN, MS, Chief Nursing Officer and Senior Vice President, BIDMC
- Christopher Casey, Director of Security Services, BIDMC
Violence against medical staff is on the rise in the US. The circumstances, sources, and types of violent behavior vary — everything from verbal threats to deadly shootings. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 50% of all workplace assaults occur in health care settings and some
studies put the number even higher. While most health care-related incidents occur in hospital emergency departments or on psychiatric wards, violent acts and threats can happen in any care setting and caregivers are increasingly concerned for their safety.
In response to this situation,
The Joint Commission,
the American Hospital Association,
the American Nurses Association,
the American Medical Association,
and other major health care organizations are developing new violence-prevention resources, highlighting health systems with notable programs and solutions. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston is one such organization that will share the solutions they've developed thus far on the
August 10 WIHI: Workplace Violence in Health Care Can't Be the Norm. We hope you'll tune in.
No strangers to
patient safety reporting, BIDMC has a number of activities underway simultaneously: better data collection on violent and aggressive incidents directed at staff and the use of a new workplace violence dashboard to track events; a regular workplace violence meeting involving multiple hospital departments, including public safety; the creation of a new "threat assessment team" that can be activated similar to how a Rapid Response Team might be summoned to a patient's bedside; and more.
As we'll learn from our three panelists from BIDMC, things are not always what they seem. For instance, at BIDMC inpatient psychiatry is
not as big a source for violent incidents as previously thought, whereas in the emergency department incidents are more numerous than reported. One theory is that caregivers have grown so used to aggressive behavior in the ED they don't bother to document it. That's among the things our panel wants to change.
What does your workplace violence mitigation strategy look like? What concerns do you have as you work through this process? We hope you'll let us know when you join the conversation with our panel on the August 10 WIHI.
