Safety Interventions: Are they helping healthcare workers feel safer?

Dr. Frances Jorgensen uses Island Health Authority Seed Grant funding to gather qualitative data on how hospital staff experience workplace violence interventions.

Much attention has been focused on the ever-rising rates of workplace violence in healthcare organizations in Canada and there is irreputable evidence that this violence has far-reaching and serious consequences on staff, patients, and society . Emerging research also suggests that equity-deserving employees are more often the target of workplace violence and may suffer longer and more enduring negative consequences on their health and wellbeing . Consequently, numerous workplace violence interventions have been proposed and implemented in healthcare settings. Still, we lack an in-depth understanding of how healthcare workers experience various interventions and whether the interventions do indeed increase their perceptions of safety. Knowing how employees experience interventions is crucial to ensure the interventions deliver on their intended purpose in the most efficient and effective way . While research emphasizes that employee perceptions of the interventions are likely the best indicator of overall effectiveness , we lack evidence about if, how and why healthcare workers perceive that workplace violence interventions increase their sense of safety in Canadian healthcare organizations.

This project is designed to gather qualitative data on how hospital staff experience workplace violence interventions that have been implemented in their workplace, and whether the interventions have increased their sense of safety. Participants will also be encouraged to offer suggestions as to how workplace interventions could be implemented to increase their effectiveness. Interviews will be conducted with approximately 75 employees in healthcare organizations in Victoria, Southern Saanich, Westshore, and Esquimalt. Ultimately, the study is expected to contribute to advancement of theory on interventions aimed at eliminating, reducing and/or mitigating the consequences of workplace violence and provide practical implications for how to implement interventions that provide healthcare workers with a stronger sense of workplace safety. Given the serious negative consequences of workplace violence, it is believed that healthcare workers will volunteer to participate in the study.

References
1. Liu, J., Gan, Y., Jiang, H., Li, L., Dwyer, R., Lu, K., ... & Lu, Z. (2019). Prevalence of workplace violence against healthcare workers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Occupational and environmental medicine, 76(12), 927-937.
2. https://documents.clcctc.ca/human-rights/Respect-at-Work-Report-2022-03-28-EN.pdf
3. Nielsen, K., & Miraglia, M. (2017). What works for whom in which circumstances? On the need to move beyond the ‘what works?’question in organizational intervention research. Human relations, 70(1), 40-62.
4. Marquez, S. M., Chang, C. H., & Arnetz, J. (2020). Effects of a workplace violence intervention on hospital employee perceptions of organizational safety. Journal of occupational and environmental medicine, 62(12), e716.