5 ways to help protect staff from workplace violence in healthcare

5-minute read

Workplace violence is more prevalent in healthcare than any other industry.¹ In the past year, more than 80% of nurses have experienced some form of violence on the job,² and for the past decade, injuries from workplace violence in healthcare have been on the rise.³

While violence can be attributed to many causes, one study highlights three as most prevalent: challenges in relationships between patients and care teams, long waiting times and stressful conditions such as noise and crowding.⁴ Other factors associated with violence include understaffing and a lack of access to emergency communication.⁵

In addition to the emotional and physical trauma so many healthcare workers endure, the toll of workplace violence comes in the form of time lost at work, job dissatisfaction, stress, burnout and turnover.^3,6

Five ways to help protect staff from workplace violence

At Stryker, we believe that our clinical communication solutions – featuring hands-free, wearable communication devices and smartphone apps in a connected ecosystem – offer specific advantages in enabling care teams to get assistance fast, and helping to mitigate some of the most common sources of workplace violence in healthcare.

1. Enable swift emergency communication and response

Even in a hospital that cultivates a culture of safety, threats and attacks can occur. The Joint Commission advises hospitals to implement a variety of technology solutions, including mobile panic buttons.⁵ OSHA further recommends personal alarm devices and alarm systems.⁷

How to do it:

By pressing the dedicated panic button on one of our hands-free, wearable communication devices, a team member in distress can quickly reach security personnel. Responders can hear what’s happening, and can locate a staff member under threat, even if that person is unable to speak. In a less emergent situation, a staff member can use voice commands to broadcast to nearby colleagues for assistance, using a hands-free device or our smartphone app.

Our communication devices are part of an enterprise communication platform that can integrate with hospital security systems for situational awareness, mass notification and more.* The platform can route alarm and system notifications to the right people at the right time and allow broad communication in the event of a threat.**^,8

2. Help support team members’ wellbeing

Frustration, pressure, fatigue and overload were common themes in a study that examined the state of mind of hospital staff who’ve been involved in a violent episode.⁴

Hard feelings build for a variety of reasons. Cognitive overload can arise in the healthcare environment, where change is constant and manual patient care tasks have become increasingly complex and time consuming.⁹ Compounding these challenges, staff may experience devastating events with no avenue to grieve or process emotion.

How to do it:

Our enterprise workflow platform can help ease the burden for care providers by:

• Enabling the right team members to receive the right information at the right time and helping to reduce alarm fatigue*⁸
• Supporting quick and effective collaboration, and streamlining common tasks like obtaining and clarifying orders and receiving critical test results.
• Empowering patient-centered workflow and bringing patient and event context into communication.
• Providing a means to pause and de-stress with the guided meditation feature built into our hands-free, wearable devices and smartphone app.

3. Enhance communication with patients and their loved ones

In one study exploring what causes patients and visitors to become violent, half the reasons staff members cited came down to patients having a negative view of service quality, staff professionalism or something a staff member said.⁴

How to do it:

Support responsive care and more efficient workflow by integrating your existing technology, such as nurse call or an app like Epic’s MyChart Bedside with our communication solutions to enable the right care team member to be notified when a patient makes a request.¹⁰

Keep loved ones informed and help reduce anxiety with our EASE patient and family communication app.

4. Help reduce wait times and improve patient flow

A patient’s journey through a hospital often includes long periods of waiting. In a study exploring waiting time as a factor in violence, 75% of respondents said waiting time contributes to violent events.⁴

How to do it:

Using our communication technology to enable staff to optimize bed management may help reduce crowding and wait times and improve patient flow in the following ways:*

• Send bed request notifications from the EHR directly to environmental services staff on their mobile devices.
• Inform nurses when new patients arrive on the unit by integrating communication with a patient flow solution like TeleTracking.
• Send patient discharge order notifications from the EHR to staff on their mobile devices.

5. Create a quieter environment

Hospital noise may negatively affect patient outcomes and staff wellbeing, and people’s exposure to noise they can’t predict or control can contribute to stress and aggressive behavior.¹¹

How to do it:

Help minimize or eliminate noise sources including overhead paging, intercoms, pagers and yelling down the hall with our communication solutions. For example, reduce the need for overhead paging by enabling direct broadcasting to specific user groups, and cut down the number of phone calls team members must make by enabling them to receive alarms and notifications on their mobile device.

We’re here to help

Healthcare workers must feel safe and be safe.

At Stryker, our solutions have been helping healthcare teams for more than 20 years with proven, reliable communication where the safety of staff and patients is paramount. Visit https://www.stryker.com/us/en/acute-care/training-and-education.html to learn more about how we are helping healthcare leaders to prevent and control workplace violence.
 

Due to workplace violence: