At this time last year, COVID-19 was at its peak, and we were taking every measure to keep our staff safe from the virus as we waited to receive the first vaccines.
This year, we’re sharpening our focus on another on-the-job safety issue that demands our highest attention: Violence and aggression at work.
We were all shaken by the recent shooting, at another Philadelphia hospital, of a nursing assistant by a co-worker. While tragedies of that scale are thankfully rare, across the city, state, and country, hospital staff are experiencing unprecedented levels of physical aggression, verbal abuse, threats, and intimidation. Wait times, being given “bad news” related to diagnosis or prognosis, substance abuse, mental illness, the presence of weapons, and gang activity are all possible risk factors for workplace violence.
Throughout the country, health care workers are at an increased risk for abuse compared with other industries. There is a direct relationship between exposure to violence and job burnout.
No health care worker should feel that violence is just part of the job. We are committed to your safety at every level.
At the state level, Governor Wolf signed legislation in 2020 allowing medical professionals to omit their last name from workplace photo identification badges as a protection against harassment. But there’s much more to be done. We need more regulations and consequences for abusive behavior.
I’m also collaborating with my colleagues across Pennsylvania to spotlight this issue within the context of workforce development in my capacity as chair of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania’s (HAP) board of directors.
Within Penn Medicine, prioritizing safety in the workplace is one of the elements of our culture that we’re focused on under Project Vital Advantage, the system-wide initiative to ensure we remain the very best place to work.
Here at PPMC, workplace safety has been and continues to be a priority. In the coming year, we will further our efforts with an advanced violence and aggression taskforce chaired by Clinical Director Lisa Triantos, MSN, RN, CEN, NE-BC, and Suzanne Smith, MEd, CPXP, director of Patient Experience, with Chief Nursing Officer/Associate Executive Director James Ballinghoff, MSN, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, and Chief Medical Officer Michael Posencheg, MD serving as executive sponsors. It will build on work done before the pandemic by PPMC’s interdisciplinary security task force, which implemented several new safety policies, including a limit on the number of nighttime visitors per patient and a new visitor control system that tracks who is in the building at night and the duration of their stay.
Our new group will evaluate a host of security enhancements that can be implemented in the near term. These may include changes in how we equip our security guards, more metal detectors, and/or staff duress buttons for all units, among other possibilities. We realize that visible reminders of safety risks such as these may cause some initial discomfort, but we are committed to considering all available options to keep our staff safe.
This is work that needs to be continually embedded in what we do at Presbyterian, and we’re going to do it with all of you. Ensuring the safety of our staff is a top institutional priority.