Greenville, South Carolina (FOX Carolina) – An industry that everyone depends on, but it’s getting more dangerous. Workplace violence in healthcare.
Last month, an analysis of Press Ganey’s National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators found that two nurses are assaulted every hour, and just last week, a nurse practitioner was stabbed to death in North Carolina by a patient. did.
It’s a reality for medical professionals here in the Upstate, too, but there are new partnerships to better track and enforce zero tolerance.
After 27 years in nursing, Dr. Lucy Easler, Director of Nursing for Behavioral Care Services at Prisma Health, says the holistic healthcare environment is not what it used to be.
“When I started working as a young nurse, I didn’t worry about being hit or kicked, not as much as I do now,” Easler said. “This is more than just a nursing phenomenon. It affects all sectors, from receptionists to patient navigators to food service workers.”
Easler is also Chair of the System-Wide Council for Workplace Safety, launched by Prisma Health in October 2019 to prevent workplace violence and attacks.
“We are very concerned about the number of people leaving the medical profession entirely because they are reluctant to put themselves at risk,” she said.
But there is a new partnership that reverses that.
The South Carolina Hospital Association and Antum Risk, a risk services company, have partnered to streamline actionable data, drive interventions, and create safety improvement initiatives statewide.
Schipp Ames, Vice President of Strategic Marketing and Communications, SC Hospital Association, said: “I haven’t seen any other state trying to figure out a way to track this at a statewide level. So we’re looking at the data, looking at trends and seeing what we can do to fix the problem. I can do it.”
Emergency departments, labor and delivery, and behavioral health departments are high-risk areas, according to Wendy Stephenson, vice president of risk management at Antum Risk.
“It’s a difficult situation, made even more difficult by the climate,” Stevenson said. “We’ve had a lot of discussions with hospitals, but this is not part of the job. You have to report them.”
Stevenson said these efforts could lead to specific policy procedures and work practices for patients deemed to be at higher risk.
“We got reports and now we see how big a problem it really is,” she said.
Ames adds that it’s about time the healthcare system views workplace violence in the same way as surgical errors and infections. https://scha.org/news/scha-and-antum-risk-partner-to-address-workplace-violence/
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