Posted on February 5, 2024 by Jagmeet - Uncategorized
Healthcare workers are 5x more likely to experience workplace violence; new strategies are necessary to keep staff safe.
Workplace violence in hospitals is not an isolated incident, and the impact reverberates throughout the organization, affecting morale, job satisfaction, and ultimately, patient outcomes. Forty-eight percent of nurses reported an increase in workplace violence in 2022 and 80% of sitters report experiencing violence. It’s time to invest in new ways to protect healthcare’s greatest resource.
Hospitals using the TeleSitter® solution to prevent workplace violence have increased by 107% since 2019. With 24/7 monitoring to keep 1:1 sitters out of harms way and immediate intervention alarms, virtual sitting has emerged as a proven method to reduce workplace violence.
Download the use case spotlight to learn new strategies and methods to keep your staff safe.
Patient-engaged video surveillance is a reliable method to accurately determine the incidence of patient aggression and violence on the nursing workforce for those under surveillance.
Trained monitor technicians, who work 24-hours a day, are rapid responders to incidents of aggression and violence, increasing both patient and nursing workforce safety.
Constant nonintrusive video surveillance, combined with individualized patient interaction, frequently prevents physical aggression and violence.
Healthcare organizations are challenged to capture previously unreported events in a culture where nurses often believe that such events are just part of their job or that nothing will change if they are reported
Although the use of technology, such as the AvaSure TeleSitter® solution, is well-established in keeping patients safe by reducing falls and injuries, it can also be used to create a safer environment for the nursing staff.
Solution
The TeleSitter® solution is a leading innovative patient safety technology that provides evidence of patient aggression and violence against the nursing workforce
During surveillance in this study, the monitoring staff observed patients’ agitating behaviors and verbally engaged with them to redirect and/or prevent escalation. In cases where a patient did not respond and there was an urgent or emergent observed behavior noted, a PEVS alarm was triggered. When monitoring staff observed a verbal or physical abuse event, a short, 500-character, free-text description of what was observed was documented into the PEVS record.
As video monitoring staff observed and intervened, data were captured automatically from each patient’s PEVS electronic record into a national database. Monitoring staff software interactions were automatically captured to provide patient engagement and event metrics, including verbal interventions, PEVS alarms, and alarm response time. The 2 main types of reported abusive incidents were physical abuse and verbal abuse. Only abusive events by a patient toward the nursing staff were analyzed.
Over the 21 months, the monitor staff at 73 hospitals documented 7915 abusive incidents that they prevented.
89% of these incidents were prevented by use of verbal intervention
11% were prevented by use of alarm activation
These findings show that the use of PEVS is effective to track and trend patient aggression toward nursing staff. Yet, because 85% of the patients who exhibited aggressive/violent behavior were not identified by the nurses as a risk, organizations should also consider adding violence risk tools as part of patients’ admission assessments.
Monitor technicians are the essential eyes on patients to detect those who may be prone to aggressive or violent behavior.
Conclusions
Patient-engaged video surveillance, a nurse-led technology program, is effective in increasing both patient and nursing workforce safety and should be expanded within and across healthcare settings.
Peer-reviewed research, ORNA® data, and anecdotal evidence have pushed protecting nurses and other staff to the top of the list of new uses for virtual care.
Presenters
Lisbeth Votruba MSN, RN, Chief Clinical Innovation Officer, AvaSure Christina Case, MSN, RN-BC, Clinical Nurse Manager, Providence St. Peter Hospital
Caregivers without behavioral health expertise struggle to manage behaviorally challenging patients while providing continuous observation (CO) care. During CO, one caregiver is assigned to provide complete and constant care to one patient. Serving as CO staff for patients who are at risk for aggressive and violent behaviors places hospital employees at increased risk for becoming victims of workplace violence.
Solution
Nurse leader rounding with an educational toolkit yielded CO staff-endorsed feelings of increased staff safety and engagement. The purpose of the STARS project was to trial the effectiveness of structured, in‐person nurse leader rounding with an educational toolkit to improve the feeling of CO staff safety and reduce the need for CO by engaging the patient, care team, and family in providing holistic care to patients requiring CO. Patient readiness to trial remote video monitoring CO was assessed, and violence prevention and assault reporting education to CO staff was reinforced.
The survey results revealed:
Improved feelings of safety when in an CO assignment because of the STARS project
Perception that the STARS project had been helpful in reducing violence
Belief that the STARS project has brought attention to the importance of the CO role in improved health for the patient
Belief that the STARS project has improved CO care
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across the country, it is vital that we continue to shine a light on the threats faced by nurses and other frontline health care workers. In fact, more than 1,700 health care workers have died from COVID-19, according to a September 2020 report by National Nurses United. With gaps in tracking and recording, that number may be much higher.
Every day, hospital staff around the country are putting their health and safety on the line to care for sick patients – and it’s having a toll. Medical personnel account for as many as 20% of known coronavirus cases in some states, according to Kaiser Health News. What health care leaders and society as a whole learn in this moment – about how to care for the nurses and frontline workers who care for us – will prove crucial now and in the future.
Thanks to technology, nurses and other caregivers at Community Memorial Hospital (CMH) in Ventura have a new way to monitor and communicate with COVID-19 and other high-risk patients. Now, with help from remote “TeleSitters,” physicians and staff at CMH can observe and care for such patients effectively while also minimizing close staff-patient interactions.
