There’s been continual evidence that violence in the workplace for healthcare professionals at all levels is under reported. If a patient combative because of a head injury, because of sedation and they take a swing at you, it’s violence but does that mean- does that get reported necessarily? If a patient’s combative and you have to wrestle him, technically that’s violence but its not- you know, it doesn’t get reported very frequently.
So there is going to be some new guidance for the UK on how violence is recorded in the workplace and this is part of the National Health Service security and management service and they have launched a guidance on different ways to mark patient records so that if a patient has been violent with health care professionals in the past or there’s some indication that they tend to lash out and become combative under certain situations, wouldn’t it be nice if there was something in the chart to warn you about this? So there are going to be procedures in place, that are going to be put in place by the National Health Service in the UK to pt violence markers on electronic and paper records.
Is this something we’re already doing here? Again, it’s under reported, how often do you place in the chart that the patient was combative and it took three of us to hold him down? You may have put something in there but did it get marked anywhere else? Did a flag get put on that when a patient is found to be repeatedly combative whenever they’re sedated? This is something that we need to look at in our facilities. It’s easy for the UK to do this kind of thing; they have a National Health Service so they can have a national standard. It’s more difficult here in the United States and I think this is one of those things that different nursing organizations, professional organizations, perhaps the emergency nurses, the critical care nurses, the American Nursing Association should look into and propose a series of standardized language, standardized ways of noting potentially patient in the care record so that future professionals dealing with them will be forewarned and be able to be on the lookout, be extra prepared.
In my other line as a paramedic, in my other show the MedicCast, I end every episode with the words Scene Safety, BSI, scene safety and body substance isolation. Its something that new emergency medical services professionals have to learn about because we’re going into the field so frequently and having to protect ourselves and be aware of our surroundings. Situational awareness is just as important in the hospital setting especially because you might often let your guard down, thinking that “hey, I’m at work, I’ve got my friends and co-workers around me, I’m not necessarily a potential victim of violence in the workplace”, and yet we find that’s really not the case and different levels and aspects of violence are inflicted upon healthcare professionals in facilities all the time. So, hopefully we can come up with a way to document this and do so more appropriately and I’m looking forward to finding out more about what’s going on in the UK and how they’re going to be doing this and perhaps we can bring some of those procedures and policies here at the United States.
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This article has been featured in the news segment of the Nursing Show podcast episode Acetaminophen Medication Review for Nurses and Episode 144.
