Does Your Training Meet OSHA Violence in the Workplace Guidelines?

Preventing workplace violence is possible — OSHA violence in the workplace guidelines can help you gauge whether your prevention training measures up.

According to OSHA, effective training in preventing workplace violence [PDF] for healthcare and social service workers “should involve all workers” and “should cover the policies and procedures for a facility as well as de-escalation and self-defense techniques.”

They also recommend that it address topics such as the following. Check your training program against these topics and see if it stacks up as well as CPI training:

The workplace violence prevention policy

Organizations often integrate CPI training into their written policies to make sure that every employee is involved in preventing workplace violence. To support that, CPI provides supplemental training and thought leadership for developing and updating policies with clear expectations that help protect your staff and your organization from risk.

Risk factors that cause or contribute to assaults

CPI training helps you identify the Precipitating Factors that can fuel disruptive or assaultive behaviors. When your staff are equipped with evidence-based tools such as our Crisis Development Model℠, they’re better able to recognize these causes of aggressive behavior and use the most appropriate and effective intervention.

Early recognition of escalating behavior or recognition of warning signs or situations that may lead to assaults

CPI training teaches staff how to recognize the early warning signs of potential crisis situations. When you give your staff CPI skills for rationally assessing verbal and nonverbal behaviors — and using other time-tested strategies for prevention and early intervention — you equip them to proactively address risk factors before they can escalate.

Work in healthcare? Check out CPI Verbal Intervention™ Training.

Ways to prevent or defuse volatile situations or aggressive behavior, manage anger, and appropriately use medications as chemical restraints

CPI is all about prevention: giving your staff tools to prevent volatile situations from spinning out of control. In addition, straightforward tools like CPI’s Decision-Making Matrix help staff make appropriate choices that support safe, effective intervention and mitigate the risk of harm if a situation has already started to escalate or can’t be averted.

A standard response action plan for violent situations, including the availability of assistance, response to alarm systems, and communication procedures 

CPI training provides a common language for staff to build consistent knowledge and a unified system for problem solving. This allows departments to plan for and collaborate on responding to (and even reducing) emergency codes. It also enables teams to effectively regroup after a crisis to document, debrief, update best practices and procedures, and prevent a next time.

Ways to deal with hostile people other than patients or clients, such as relatives and visitors

CPI training takes a holistic view of human behavior — because we’re all vulnerable to stressors and capable of escalating into crisis behavior. So, the supportive techniques staff learn in training naturally translate to all interpersonal encounters. In the words of security professional Terry Gagliano

“CPI has prepared our staff to be more confident in interacting with patients and visitors as well as each other.”

Progressive behavior control methods and safe methods to apply restraints

While you can't control someone else's behavior, you can control your own response to aggressive behavior. That’s why our training focuses on verbal de-escalation to prevent the need for restraint. It teaches the behavior levels an individual may go through during a crisis, and corresponding staff attitudes/approaches.

Our program also incorporates physical disengagement skills for blocking and moving away from strikes and grabs, for example. And for last-resort situations when all other techniques have been tried and failed, we teach safer, less-restrictive physical interventions — emphasizing the safety of both staff and the individual in crisis — to help you mitigate the risks of physical and psychological harm.

We also provide guidance to help you make decisions that reduce the risk of liability and keep you compliant with the laws and regulations that govern the use of and the documentation of restraint in your industry and/or location.

The location and operation of safety devices such as alarm systems, along with the required maintenance schedules and procedures

When you use CPI, each class your Certified Instructors teach gives staff further opportunity to engage in safety dialogs and understand your procedures. This helps you provide continuity in maintaining both the safety of your facility itself and the safety of each person within it.

Ways to protect oneself and coworkers, including use of the “buddy system”

CPI training emphasizes collaboration to help staff keep each other — and those in their care — as safe as possible at all times. This team approach to violence prevention creates a supportive environment that improves not only staff safety but staff retention by increasing confidence and morale.

Policies and procedures for reporting and recordkeeping

Our resources for drafting meaningful policies include reporting and documenting events to support risk management, crisis resolution, and organizational transparency. We give you tools to train staff in documenting and reporting incidents as part of the debriefing process. We also offer troubleshooting guidance (one of our industry-leading supports that our customers love and use the most), as well as supplemental training on incident reporting.

Information on multicultural diversity to increase staff sensitivity to racial and ethnic issues and differences

CPI training teaches supportive interventions that help staff meet people where they are and accept them for who they are. Professionals trained in CPI often say it enables them to further develop their cultural competence.

Policies and procedures for obtaining medical care, counseling, workers' compensation or legal assistance after a violent episode or injury

If your workplace violence prevention training is to be effective, it’s crucial that your organization support it with processes that support staff. CPI helps you develop policies and procedures that encourage collaborative dialogue and transparent documentation processes that empower staff and supervisors. And it helps you align with the best practice guidelines of regulatory agencies that are responsible for ensuring worker wellbeing.

People are priceless. That's why preventing workplace violence is an investment that no organization can afford not to make.

​OSHA’s recommendations are based on years of data that reflect how healthcare and social service workers are stuck at the top of the risk spectrum for illness and injury from workplace violence.

But if you’re a decision maker at your organization, you can push these metrics in a more positive direction by ensuring that your staff have the right tools for effectively preventing workplace violence.

It’s critical to remember that “incident” is a reporting term. Every “incident” is really a situation in which human beings have been exposed to aggressive or violent behavior. Lives are changed, sometimes permanently, by physical harm and psychological trauma. These lives belong to professionals, clients, patients, students, families, bystanders — all kinds of people. When we acknowledge the human beings that populate these metrics, statistics become starkly personal. And they should be.

Regulatory compliance should be a positive outcome of having a culture of safety, not the reason for creating one. When our perspective is one of empowering those around us to perform their professional responsibilities at their best, or to receive outstanding person-centered care, creating a culture of safety becomes a priority that truly honors the lives and safety of all our staff and those in their care.

So, how does your training measure up with the workplace violence OSHA guidelines?

Do you have comprehensive training, policies, and procedures in place?

Do you see room for improvement?

Fortunately, OSHA’s guidelines shed light on exactly how it’s possible for you to bridge industry best practices with your person-centered culture of safety. CPI offerings empower organizations like yours to truly live their mission statements, and shine as leaders in safe and effective care.

Take a look at what organizations like yours have accomplished in preventing violence with CPI training.