Safety and staff well-being are among the top concerns for healthcare facilities and professionals. Patients and family members expect to be safe in a hospital and are already under a great amount of stress when they arrive.
When healthcare workers worry about their safety, it detracts from the quality of patient care. Implementing a safety plan can decrease incidents of workplace violence in nursing and increase healthcare worker satisfaction and workplace ranking.
Providing for the safety of the staff benefits current healthcare workers and allows the organization to recruit and retain quality employees by marketing the improved safety of the workplace. Along with fostering engagement, healthcare facilities that implement safety plans experience reduced burnout and retain more employees. Safety may be one of the main concerns of a prospective employee in a very competitive industry.
Staffing Shortages Due to Workplace Violence
Hospitals and healthcare organizations that don’t have safety plans in place will likely experience higher rates of staff burnout and staffing shortages, the result of vulnerability to workplace violence. Healthcare workers experience a higher incidence of violence than workers in other industries. Creating and implementing safety plans to reduce incidents of workplace violence can not only instill confidence among healthcare workers but is essential to their well-being. Knowing that a healthcare facility has a workplace safety plan in place promotes a healthy sense of safety among staff and patients.
Healthcare workers are often targets of abuse from patients, families, and even fellow staff members. Incidences of workplace violence in nursing vary in character, including verbal or psychological abuse and physical assaults, and can happen in any area or unit of the hospital. These events may result in physical and/or psychological injuries, mental health issues including anxiety, depression, and burnout, time lost at work, and even workers leaving the organization. Workplace violence in nursing has a far-reaching impact beyond just the incident itself.
Workplace Safety Plans Can Decrease Staff Burnout
By providing for the safety of staff, healthcare organizations can help the workers feel encouraged as they care for their patients and communicate with families. While the federal government and state legislatures are taking action to address workplace violence in nursing, healthcare organizations can take action to establish a safer workplace.
- Implement straightforward reporting procedures and no-nonsense policies that reinforce staff safety and comfort so that they can report safety issues without fear of retaliation.
- Lead scheduled safety checks based on previous incident information.
- Evaluate suitability of technology to conduct safety checks such as visitor management and emergency weather alerts.
By applying these protocols, healthcare organizations are taking steps to decrease workplace violence in healthcare facilities and improve the well-being of staff by supporting an environment where staff feel safe and valued.
Safety Plans Can Reduce Workplace Violence in Nursing
Healthcare workers should feel that they can approach hospital administration if they feel unsafe at work. Many who experience workplace violence in nursing perceive a lack of support from the administration, citing this as the reason they seek to leave their organization. Many staff members report they would feel more supported by consistent safety training, analysis of staff schedules and workloads, and moving staff around as needed to ease healthcare workers’ workloads. Administrators can also create more efficient alliances to take advantage of the variety of skill sets within their staff.
Staff also feel that it should be easier to report workplace violence in healthcare facilities, and administrators should create straightforward procedures for staff to follow when violent incidents occur against them. This should address occurrences of underreporting and clearly bolster safety at their facility. Addressing safety concerns should include supporting staff mental health and well-being, stopping bullying and harassment, and supporting a collaborative work environment. Holding regular town hall meetings or feedback talks where staff can voice their safety concerns would be helpful, as would providing mental health resources and care for staff, and creating a policy forbidding bullying and harassment of any kind.
Giving staff a protocol for rapidly requesting help if they feel unsafe is important to encourage healthcare workers to take charge of their safety and help others in the workplace. Healthcare organizations can provide discreet equipment like wearable duress buttons so that employees can request help without drawing attention to themselves while experiencing potential violence. De-escalation training can alleviate fears and manage workplace violence situations.
Creating alliances among departments may be an effective method to ensure help is available when needed, and can arrive quickly and efficiently. The camaraderie and teamwork generated from these alliances can cultivate confidence, reduce burnout and stress, and improve patient care.
CENTEGIX: Providing Support for Staff with Safety Plans
When it comes to protecting staff from workplace violence in nursing, every second matters.® CENTEGIX allows healthcare organizations to provide this support for staff by offering solutions for a multi-faceted safety plan. This innovative safety plan can also create a supportive atmosphere of safety that retains and recruits top talent while providing excellent patient care.
A safety plan can begin with CrisisAlert,™ a wearable duress button team members can use to instantly request help from first responders in a potentially dangerous situation. The CrisisAlert badge allows administrators and responders to know the exact location of the incident for a rapid response to the situation. If there is a wide-scale threat, CrisisAlert’s customizable PSAP integration can send an alert directly to first responders. The wearable duress button provides healthcare organizations with peace of mind in instances of workplace violence, by de-escalating these potentially dangerous situations, thereby improving patient care.
As part of CENTEGIX’s comprehensive Safety Platform,™ Safety Blueprint™ includes high-quality, dynamic maps that enable healthcare facilities to quickly share assets across public safety applications and contribute to the organization’s safety plan.
