Creating a Culture of Safety in Health Care Starts with Coordination

In a report shared by the American Hospital Association (AHA), it was estimated that in a single year, hospitals paid $846.7 million—18.2% of their total security spend—as a result of in-facility violence. The AHA stated: “Violence that involves a staff member, whether from a patient, visitor, or another employee, has a significant impact on the operations of the hospital. Workplace violence leads to increased staff turnover, medical care, lost productivity, and a host of other issues for injured employees.”

How does your facility ensure that you're creating a cohesive culture of safety? It starts with coordination.

By reviewing risk assessments of hospitals that hadn’t yet implemented a comprehensive workplace violence prevention program, CPI has identified increasing levels of unmitigated risk.

In addition to our own risk assessments performed at CPI, examining the Joint Commission Sentinel Event Alert 59 and OSHA guidelines both echo the sentiments that when everyone on staff gets trained, the whole hospital can create a culture of safety.

Assuring Hospital Safety Requires a Coordinated Effort

In all aspects of health care, coordination matters. We’re all reaching the same critical conclusions about workplace violence in hospitals:

• No matter where you work in a hospital, there is an opportunity to proactively address the risks of workplace violence.
• No matter who you are, you have a role to play in keeping everybody safe.
• No matter what you do in a hospital, you need to be able to use a common language with every other department of your hospital when it comes to coping with the risks of workplace violence.

Health care staff, regardless of whether their role is clinical, face the highest risk of workplace violence compared to other industries. The relationship between cultures of safety, a common and open dialog about violence, and the continuum of behaviors that constitute workplace violence, has been well established. But the trend of workplace violence in health care continues unabated. What's the solution?

A Culture of Safety Belongs to Everybody

While we know certain areas and staff in hospitals face statistically greater risks for workplace violence, we can’t consistently address the threat until everyone has access to the right workplace violence prevention training solution for their role.

Our friends at OSHA, the AHA, and the Joint Commission are right: if only some people are prepared, then only some people can participate in a culture of safety. And a culture of safety belongs to everybody.

It’s time to make a culture of safety accessible to everyone in your hospital, no matter their role.

Per OSHA, every employee should have access to workplace violence prevention training. And now, CPI makes our evidence-based training more accessible by increasing your ability to coordinate your staff’s approach to sustaining a culture of safety.

CPI Training is Effective and Inclusive

Nonviolent Crisis Intervention^® Training has long been the solution that effectively supports better outcomes for staff, patients, and visitors to hospitals, and is primarily administered to key staff in the roles and areas of the highest risk.

Hospitals that implement CPI training experience decreased workplace violence, increased staff performance, and successful patient outcomes.

But if hospitals are really going to build and sustain cultures of safety, it’s time to expand staff access to violence prevention training.

Our solutions will empower your team to coordinate their violence prevention approach using a common language and shared values, by including staff in your hospital’s culture of safety who might previously have been left out. Learn more about our training solutions and implementation strategy in our Training Solutions for Health Care Professionals eBook.