Health care organizations continue to face significant headwinds, including staffing challenges, high patient volumes and behavioral health needs, and limited time and resources to implement long-term violence prevention strategies. It's created a perfect storm driving an increase in workplace violence in health care.
In fact, a recent report from Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) finds that nearly one in five health care employees now feels unsafe at work — and less than half feel prepared to address a violent crisis. Beyond the immediate and implied threat to physical safety, a high risk of workplace violence can have serious staffing implications in an industry already struggling with employee recruitment and retention.
Implementing effective crisis prevention training and safety protocols is an essential step leaders should take to help protect and retain their workplace teams — as well as patients and visitors. Through training, staff gain the skills necessary to prevent and respond to emergency incidents, which will in turn reduce staff turnover, increase the ability to recruit new employees, and reduce cost to the health care organization – all necessary steps to help create a culture that sincerely values health care staff.
As an organization dedicated to creating safe health care spaces, CPI’s recent quantitative research and inaugural Workplace Violence Prevention Training report aim to support the industry with meaningful insights and recommendations for improving safety. Based on those individualized needs the report illuminates, CPI offers cost-effective and comprehensive turn-key trainings to help organizations as they work to reduce turnover, increase morale and productivity, reduce workers' comp claims and improve employees' well-being.
The Workplace Violence Prevention Training Index for Health Care
Between September 2022 and January 2023, CPI surveyed more than 3,000 health care professionals from organizations across the United States and Canada to assess the state of workplace violence prevention training. From the data collected, the organization created a first-of-its-kind Workplace Violence Prevention Training Index for health care, enabling professionals to assess their training and preparedness relative to the industry.
To create the index, CPI grouped survey data into two categories:
- The Safe Workplace Index (SWI) defines how safe staff feels, how comfortable they are responding to a crisis and their belief in the efficacy of their organization’s current policies in reducing violence.
- The Workplace Preparedness Index (WPI) provides an assessment of workplace violence committees, level of staff involvement in violence prevention, and de-escalation training and training frequency.
By organizing responses into these sub-indexes, CPI was then able to average these numbers into a single, overall score — the Workplace Violence Prevention Training Index (WVP Training Index) — which groups healthcare professionals into categories of Leaders, Above Average, Below Average or Laggards.
Annual Report
CPI has released a full report of its findings from the initial survey data. The inaugural Workplace Violence Prevention Training annual report provides information that can help health care teams understand the current state of violence prevention training in the industry, as well as key takeaways and recommendations that teams can use to support the need for training within their organization.
One promising takeaway: of those surveyed, most health care organizations perform slightly above average on the index. Above-average performance generally indicates teams have confidence in their organization’s safety and have at least some violence prevention policies and training in place. However, training may be inconsistent — leaving staff unprepared as patient volumes increase.
The findings also concluded that an organization’s size may contribute to staff preparedness and perceptions of safety. Individuals from smaller organizations (less than 100 beds) tended to feel safer at work, but less prepared to address a crisis. There is a sense of urgency, as the data also indicated employees from many systems believe their teams feel unsafe at work, while most only consider themselves “average” when it comes to crisis preparedness. The majority are not confident their current policies will help people stay safe.
This indicates there is more work to be done in the health care industry.
Finding Your Score on the Workplace Violence Prevention Training Index
Now that clear benchmarks have been established, health care professionals can take a self-assessment to find where their organization ranks on CPI’s new index — and how it compares to the rest of the industry. Knowing your score can highlight important training gaps that can and should be addressed to keep your team safe at work. The self-assessment tool can be found at crisisprevention.com/GetScore.
For those interested in training, CPI offers a variety of turn-key training programs — from various in-person intervention trainings to a prevention-focused online training option. Implementing such programs can keep your team safe and ensure compliance with industry safety regulations, while helping your employees feel more prepared, confident, and satisfied with their jobs — increasing employee retention.
To learn more about CPI’s violence prevention training for health care professionals, visit crisisprevention.com/Industries/Health-Care-Professionals.