New: Workplace Violence and Prevention Policy

Suppose one of your patients has been demanding that her prescription for pain medication gets refilled right away, even though she has been told on several occasions that she no longer needs to take it. The patient said that if it doesn’t get refilled soon, she’s coming to the hospital and people are going to get hurt. What should you do?

Previously, there was no unified system in place at Brigham Health for reporting workplace safety and violence threats and incidents like this one. But now there is.

On November 1, Brigham Health implemented a new Workplace Safety and Violence Prevention Policy, which provides all personnel with tools and resources, including an incident response checklist, to help guide them through immediate steps that must be taken when workplace safety and violence events occur at Brigham Health. Workplace violence is defined as any physical assault, threatening behavior or verbal abuse that occurs in the work setting.

“We have a duty to protect our personnel from all instances of workplace violence,” says Dave Corbin, MS, CPP, CHPA, Director of Police, Security and Parking at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who co-chairs the Brigham Health Workplace Safety Committee. “In healthcare institutions across the country, workplace violence is a serious issue. Our team has completed a thoughtful rebuild of the Workplace Safety and Violence Prevention Policy and constructed it in a way so that it can be used widely at all of our Brigham Health locations.”

The policy, which applies to all personnel, including employees, volunteers, trainees and Persons of Interest, was established through the multidisciplinary Workplace Safety Committee from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital and Brigham Health ambulatory sites. The Committee is responsible for evaluation of the policies, strategies and programs implemented by the Brigham Health Workplace Safety Committee and the efforts implemented by the Brigham Health Patients at Risk Committee.

Christi Clark Barney, MSN, RN, Executive Director of Patient Safety, Quality, Risk Management, Infection Control, CDI and Clinical Compliance at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, stresses the importance of reporting incidents of workplace violence. The committee will use reporting data to make sure people are safe and get the support they need. “A sense of personal respect and safety is foundational to our ability to have energy to care for patients,” she says.

What All Personnel Need to Know

A major goal for the committee was to ensure the contents of the policy, including an incident response checklist, are easily digestible for personnel.

The checklist, which creates a highly reliable system for responding to issues of workplace violence at Brigham Health, outlines the timeline for action steps and resources and clarifies incident response roles.

A “Safety/Security” reporting icon is accessible in RL Solutions that allows personnel to report safety and security events related to patient care. By submitting a report after an incident occurs, the Workplace Safety Committee will be able to collect data to track patterns, identify gaps in process steps and quantify its progress on improving workplace safety.

For more information and to view the policy, visit BWFHconnect.org.