Posted By Uday
Any incident in which a person is abused,threatened or assulted in circumstances relating to their work is " WORK RELATED AGGRESSION ".
It has serious consequences for employees ( especially the Nursing staff )who could undergo pain and distress.Is it possible to avoid it ? If yes how can we avoid the verbal abuse / aggression in an EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT of a public hospital. Simply regular training does not help the staff. Our nursing staff are subjected to potential verbal abuse which could cause damage to the employees health through anxiety and stress. Debriefing or counselling after the event has taken place also does not help ( I feel )
So the question is how do we prevent the verbal / aggression from happening again ?How do you think we can control the public/visitors ( or the relatives of the patients )entering the hospitals.
Also looking for any risk assessments in Emergency department in public hospitals.
Readers help would be appreciated.

Posted By Stupendous Man
Uday,

I presume from your e-mail address that you are based in Australia -could you confirm?

Posted By Bill Parkinson
Uday

Agree with Phill as I work within an acute hospital and also attend meetings with the NHS SMS tackling violence at work.

Whilst you are unlikely to eliminate all verbal abuse there are strategies which you can use to reduce and minimise it. However, you need several elements working in unison.

Over the last few years the NHS has taken steps to implement a consistent strategy to tackle violence to NHS staff. The intial barrier (and one which is still be overcome fully) is to get nurses and staff to agree that it is not "part of the job".

In addition you need a comprehensive policy on dealing with aggression and violent behaviour which includes training staff on the different offences which may be committed, what to say to the police to enable them to take action, what a "reasonable force" is to defend yourself (Police deliver our training which is very well received and helps staff) and also an incident reporting system where incidents are followed up and patients/visitors warned about unacceptable behaviour and the consequences of any repeated incidents.

We issue warning letters saying that if any further incidents occur in the next 12 months we will look as to whether they will be excluded from all our premises (we have 3 hospitals) for a period of 12 months subject to national criteria. In recent times we have excluded one patient, warned another, got the Police to pursue Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) against visitors and had one patient arrested (after threatening staff with a weapon).

We also put up warning posters stating our stance of unacceptable behaviour and in line with the work of the NHS SMS. In addition we have also installed CCTV both internally and externally together with security staff present on site at two of our main sites.

Whilst we haven't eliminated all incidents we are seeing a downwards trend overall and are working on ways to maintain this.

One thing - it is a long road (seven years so far) but don't give up !

Regards

Bill Parkinson