As the Workplace Violence Crisis Escalates in Healthcare, We #HAVHope for a Brighter Future Powered by Staff Safety
Violence against healthcare workers is among the most significant crises impacting our healthcare delivery system today — marked by a sharp 56% increase in violent crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and leaving a staggering 92% of healthcare workers exposed to violence last year during a one-month span alone.1,2 With 40% of violent incidents unfolding in patient rooms, clinicians and staff are often secluded and left to fend for their own safety with minimal support.3 Our healthcare heroes deserve better — fortunately, there are concrete steps we can take as a united industry to not only hope for a safer future for the healthcare workforce, but to create it.
Hospitals Against Violence: A United Front
Tomorrow, June 2, is the American Hospital Association’s national Hospitals Against Violence #HAVhope Friday: A day of awareness to exchange ideas and best practices among hospitals, health systems and technology vendors to spark innovative approaches for preventing violence in the workplace.
As we band together to tackle the workplace violence epidemic, it’s important to remember the gravity of what’s at stake: Exposure to workplace violence has been proven to escalate stress levels and jeopardize mental health for staff members — including a 2-4x greater likelihood of experiencing PTSD4 — as well as directly impacting an overall increase in the number of days taken off from work for frontline employees. Healthcare workers saw a 50% increase in days away from work — associated with intentional injuries in the workplace — between 2018 and 2020.5 Violence in the workplace not only negatively impacts employees’ sense of safety and well-being — it also, as a result, fosters an environment where patient care can suffer.6
Preventing Workplace Violence in Healthcare
To help combat these growing trends of violent behavior in the healthcare setting, the American Hospital Association promotes a four-pronged framework for preventing violence, including:
1) fostering a culture of safety,
2) mitigating risks,
3) collaborating with partners to intervene before violence erupts, and
4) providing trauma support, when needed, for both physical and non-physical trauma.
Preventing workplace violence in healthcare is a topic that’s close to our hearts at Commure. Our staff duress system, Commure Strongline, is a discreet, wearable badge that reimagines the traditional hospital panic button as a comprehensive staff safety solution that directly addresses the first three imperatives of the AHA framework. It is designed to prevent and de-escalate incidents of violence as quickly as possible to ensure that the fourth part of the framework — trauma support — is offered only as a rare and last resort.
To learn more about how the Commure Strongline staff duress system protects the healthcare workforce from violence, visit our product page or watch the video below to see how our small badge drives a big impact:
1 https://www.ashrm.org/resources/workplace_violence
2 https://blog.perceptyx.com/news-92-of-health-workers-experienced-or-witnessed-workplace-violence-last-month
3 https://www.osha.gov/workplace-violence
4 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7824770/#:~:text=In%20this%20study%2C%20the%20type,one%20type%20of%20exposure%20only
5 https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/osha-data-in-new-white-paper-demonstrates-high-rates-of-illness-and-injury-among-healthcare-workers-during-pandemic-and-exposes-the-failure-by-the-hospital-industry-to-adequately-protect-frontline-staff-301821077.html
6 https://www.jointcommission.org/-/media/tjc/documents/standards/r3-reports/wpvp-r3_20210618.pdf
