Is your healthcare organization in compliance with the NEW regulations from The Joint Commission? Sentinel Event Alert #59 (April, 2018) is specifically about physical and verbal violence against healthcare workers putting YOUR workplace violence program under the microscope. As your experienced team of healthcare violence mitigation experts, we want to help keep everyone in the healthcare field in the know. In order to be in compliance with The Joint Commission, take a look below at the new requirements:
Actions Suggested by The Joint Commission
Health care workers must be alert and ready to act when they encounter verbal or physical violence — or the potential for violence — from patients or visitors who may be under stress or who may be fragile, yet also volatile. Health care organizations are encouraged to address this growing problem by looking beyond solutions that only increase security.
1. Clearly define “workplace violence” and put systems into place across the organization that enable staff to report workplace violence instances, including verbal abuse.
2. Recognize that data come from several sources, capture, track and trend all reports of workplace violence – including verbal abuse and attempted assaults when no harm occurred.
3. Provide appropriate follow-up and support to victims, witnesses and others affected by workplace violence, including psychological counseling and trauma-informed care if necessary.
4. Review each case of workplace violence to determine contributing factors. Analyze data related to workplace violence, and worksite conditions, to determine priority situations for intervention.
5. Develop quality improvement initiatives to reduce incidents of workplace violence.
6. Train all staff, including security, in deescalation, self-defense and response to emergency codes.
7. Evaluate workplace violence reduction initiatives.
Source: Regulations from The Joint Commission
If something were to happen, are you prepared to provide documentation, policies, and training records to support your workplace violence program? How thorough are those records? Is your organization learning from near misses and incidents? These are questions that surveyors or lawyers will ask.
Violence in the workplace occurs in all healthcare settings. From in-home healthcare to a nursing home to a hospital, many healthcare staff members deal with workplace violence on a regular basis. It’s important for your healthcare staff to be properly trained on how to react to a violent situation. From mitigating a potentially violent incident to reacting in a timely manner to a situation, give your staff the knowledge and tools to accurately handle this type of occurrence.
Here at TEAM MDI, we can help train your healthcare staff with the right tools AND give them the confidence it takes to react to a potentially violent situation in the workplace. Our healthcare violence mitigation company continues to employ extensive, real world, problem solving experience to create cutting edge training doctrine customized for the healthcare industry. The comprehensive training programs are designed to provide personal tools that empower healthcare professionals to effectively and efficiently interact with patients, visitors, physicians and staff in order to maintain a safer working environment and the continuity of business. The collective goal is to assist organizations in providing a safe environment for all patients, visitors, physicians and staff so they may continue to prosper in their endeavor to save lives.
If you’re interested in learning how Mitigation Dynamics can help your healthcare organization, contact us at 816.251.4567 today!
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