Verbal De-Escalation Program for Nurse Self-Efficacy When Caring for Violent Patients and Family Members

The objective of this project was to help nurses and health care workers stay safe through increased self-efficacy when caring for violent patients and family members. Nurses and health care providers are not always safe in practice and can be harmed by violent patients and their family members (The Joint Commission, 2010). Injuries to healthcare workers continue to increase because of violence in healthcare (Ison, 2013). The American Nurses Association (2015) wants all nurses to work in a safe environment. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2015) reports that over 11,000 assaults happen at work and “almost 19% of these assaults occurred in nursing and residential facilities alone” (para. 1). Violence is an objective that Healthy People 2020 (2017) addresses as a need for change in the workplace.

The PICOT question for this project is “Will nurses and health care workers in a community based medical-surgical unit, using protocol in a verbal de-escalation program have improved self-efficacy when caring for potentially violent patients and family members compared to nurses/health care workers that do not use the verbal de-escalation program?” The comparison in this project is data from employee injury incident reports and code-violet debriefing forms at the clinical site. Both of these forms determined the incidence and levels of violence at the clinical site, in a retrospective study from August 2014 to August 2015. The outcome is improved self-efficacy of nurse and health care workers with a program to de-escalate potentially violent patients and family members. Medical-surgical nurses and health care workers attended a staff meeting where the program was introduced. A pre and post-survey was given to the employees. Based on the comparison between the pre and post survey mean, employees showed significant change in self-efficacy. Significant statistical change, with a 95% statistical confidence, was indicated in 14 of the 15 survey questions. A verbal de-escalation program has implications in practice to be a valuable tool for increased self-efficacy for all employees within health care.

References

American Nurses Association. (2015). Incivility, bullying, and workplace violence.1-23.

Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.org/Bullying-Workplace-Violence

Healthy People 2020. (2017). Retrieved from www.healthypeople.gov

Ison, R. (2013). Lessons from the frontline: Compassionate approaches to preventing patient

violence. Retrieved from www.PSQH.com

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). (2015). Healthcare: Workplace

violence. Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthcarefacilities/violence.html

The Joint Commission. (TJC). (2014). Preventing workplace violence: Methods for preventing

everyday events. Retrieved from HCPRO.COM