Education and Training for the Prevention of Violence in the Home Health Care Workplace Environment

Abstract

Home health care (HHC) is one of the fastest growing sectors in health care with an expected 66% increase in growth and projected significant rise in HHC services. This results in an increase in demand of 109% for home health care registered nurses by 2020. Exposure to unsafe situations and incidents of violence have resulted in HHC nursing being the second most dangerous occupation with approximately 500,000 nurses becoming the victims of violent crimes in the workplace every year. Currently, there are no Federal mandates that require worker training to recognize or prevent workplace violence in HHC. This scholarly project is designed to examine the effect of workplace violence prevention (WVP) education and training program on HHC providers’ perception regarding assessing and preventing violence in the HHC environment. This quasi-experimental study used an investigator-created 31-question online survey comprised of six sections, which was validated by HHC industry experts. A convenience sample of 150 HHC providers from one HHC agency was invited to participate in this study. Inclusion criteria were: a) included: ≥ 18 years of age; b) currently employed as a HHC provider. Those who did not meet these criteria were excluded. HHC providers recruited were N=98 for the pre-test and N=80 for the post-test. More than one third (35.7%) of HHC providers reported experiencing workplace violence prior to the WVP training and 47.5% post-training. Unmatched participant scores comparing topics presented in WVP training previous to this study’s training more than doubled the percentage who recognize and handle physically aggressive behavior (44.4% to 97.5%), verbally aggressive behavior (11.1% to 96.3%), self-defense (16.7 to 37.5%) and techniques for verbally deescalating (27.8% to 95%). HHC agencies have an obligation to provide employees with the tools necessary to identify unsafe work environments and provide education on handling situations that have the potential to escalate into violent encounters.