Overview
Workplace violence refers to any physical assault, aggressive behavior, or any inappropriate use of words resulting in abuse in workstations. The workplace takes account of the external environment and the functional areas in an organization. Workplace violence instances include threats of intimidation, fights, suicides, shootings, rapes, harassment along other traumatizing actions. For instance, an individual may attempt to harm a colleague by pushing or striking him or her with the intention of causing bodily harm. Verbal harassment includes false accusations and the use of abusive language (Estes, Chapman, Dodd, Hollister, & Harrington, 2013). Strangers, co-workers, clients, or even personal relationships can instigate aggression. The economic effect of workplace violence in health care settings include lost wages, lost productivity, legal expenses, lost working hours, and damage to property.
Discussions
Workplace violent behavior has become a compound and risky occupational danger in today’s health care setting. Consequently, the risk arises from exposure to aggressive people and due to lack of well-built violence deterrence programs in the health care environment. Domestic violence also spread out, and it results in the sphere of threat for other workers, visitors, as well as clients. Risk factors in health care violence consist of commonness of handguns and other weapons among patients or friends, increased use of hospitals by the criminal justice system to hold up criminals, lack of follow up for discharged mental patients, unrestricted movement along with pitiable lighting systems (Lipscomb & El Ghaziri, 2013). Vulnerability to violent threats in health care setting requires a detailed analysis and assessment aimed at determining actions needed to minimize the risk. This may involve trend analysis and incident monitoring. Victims and witnesses of workplace violence in the healthcare setting require immediate treatment and counseling to minimize trauma effects.
A stranger who has no legitimate relations with either the employees or organization may cause violence. The central aim is robbery and may be characterized by assaults, deaths, or sexual abuse. Patients who may be violent in nature or that are discontented with services offered may be behind violent acts in hospitals. These patients may be prison inmates or even suspects being pursued by police officers. A co-worker or a past employee may also be involved in workplace violence where he or she brings forth hostile behaviors that result to harm (Estes et al., 2013). Lastly, a person in close relationship may perpetrate workplace violence with the victim because of personal issues. Results of violence include psychological torture, injuries, death, and feelings of intimidation.
Recommendations
To prevent cases of workplace violence, employers should ensure the working environment is free from hazardous elements; this would involve worksite analysis, risk control, education, and training of employees on how to handle equipments along with effective evaluations. Management commitment, as well as employee involvement, should aim at curbing workplace violence. The management is responsible of ensuring reduced violence by seeking employees’ opinions and implementing safety programs. In that regard, employee emotional and physical safety should be guaranteed to promise quality client service. In addition, the management should outline a comprehensive plan to maintain workplace security, assign duties and authority to skilled personnel, and create a zero tolerance policy to workplace violence in the organization (Lipscomb & El Ghaziri, 2013). Employees should be encouraged to report cases of violence to ensure that prompt actions are taken. More so, employees should understand and comply with workplace violence prevention programs and adequately utilize available safety measures. Heath care environment installed with effective alarm systems, metal detectors, emergency rooms, secured nurses’ service counters and closed circuit video recorders guarantee maximum safety.
References
Estes, C., Chapman, S., Dodd, C., Hollister, B. & Harrington, C. (2013). Health Policy: Crisis and Reform. (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett.
Lipscomb, J. A., & El Ghaziri, M. (2013). Workplace violence prevention: improving front-line healthcare worker and patient safety. New solutions: a journal of environmental and occupational health policy, 23(2), 297-313.