From Policy to Practice: Tackling Workplace Violence in Healthcare Settings-Webinar Recording: From Policy to Practice: Tackling Workplace Violence in Healthcare Settings

Webinar Recording: From Policy to Practice: Tackling Workplace Violence in Healthcare Settings

Video Transcription

Video Summary

This webinar, moderated by Dr. Dipti Zalbiati and hosted by Michelle Flores, focused on addressing workplace violence in healthcare, highlighting the translation of policies into practical prevention and response strategies. Heather Kamper presented Vanderbilt University Medical Center's SHARE program, a confidential support resource for faculty and staff experiencing sexual harassment, including harassment by patients and visitors. The program offers counseling, psychiatric consultation, and managerial guidance, emphasizing safety and culture change.<br /><br />Dr. Bindu Kumar of Mainline Health discussed the implementation of Strongline, a discreet duress badge alert system integrated with a comprehensive, multidisciplinary violence prevention program. This system allows staff to silently summon help during threatening situations, supported by extensive training, policies, and behavioral assessment tools.<br /><br />Dr. Lynn VanMale from Kaiser Permanente emphasized the importance of standardized threat management programs at scale, advocating for C-suite engagement, structured professional judgment in assessing threats, robust data collection, and policy frameworks that avoid zero-tolerance language to encourage reporting and effective intervention. She highlighted challenges such as underreporting and shifts in violence patterns due to external events like health system closures.<br /><br />The session underscored multidisciplinary collaboration, continuous education, structured data use, and supportive organizational cultures as key to effectively preventing and managing workplace violence in healthcare settings.

Keywords

workplace violence

healthcare

SHARE program

sexual harassment

Strongline duress badge

violence prevention

threat management

multidisciplinary collaboration

organizational culture