Journal of healthcare protection management : publication of the International Association for Hospital Security最新文献

Background: Nursing care facilities are more than seven times as likely to have a worker injured by workplace violence requiring days away from work compared to the overall rate in the private sector (BLS, 2018b). Several states have implemented regulations requiring workplace violence prevention programs in healthcare facilities, including nursing homes.

Methods: The manager responsible for workplace violence prevention programs at twenty long-term care (LTC) facilities in New Jersey (n=9) and Virginia (n=11) voluntarily participated in a face-to-face interview utilizing a validated survey regarding workplace violence programs in their facilities. This project compared the comprehensiveness of nursing home workplace violence prevention programs in New Jersey (NJ) where the "Workplace Violence Prevention in Healthcare Facilities Act" was enacted with the comprehensiveness of programs in Virginia (VA) where no workplace violence regulations exist.

Results: Descriptive statistics show that there was variation in workplace violence prevention program components, such as training, reporting, and risk assessments, where some facilities had relatively comprehensive programs and others had weak programs. Virginia, the control state without any workplace violence regulations generally had equal implementation compared to the New Jersey, the regulated state. Overall nursing home characteristics and its relationship to security program implementation was mixed. LTC facilities with above average Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ratings and non-profit status reported higher utilization of environmental controls. The data shows that facilities in Virginia (non-regulated state), non-profit facilities, corporate owned, and facilities with high CMS ratings tended to have a high level of training. It was also found that corporate owned facilities had more extensive implementation of security programs.

Conclusion: This survey demonstrated that nursing home administrators are aware of workplace violence in their facilities and have instituted programs and policies to attempt to address this issue. However, these programs and policies are diffuse and "ad-hoc" in nature, likely making them less effective. A lack of regulatory enforcement and the lack of awareness of regulations contributes to the ineffectiveness of the regulation and implementation of security program elements. Other parameters such as overall nursing home quality (e.g. CMS rating) and corporate versus independent ownership also seemed to impact the comprehensiveness of security programs, but this relationship is multifactorial and less clearly articulated by this study design.

Robot security officers cur- rently are now available to perform functions which are not cost-effective for humans, according to the author who heads a company which manu- factures them. In this article he describes the capabilities of robot officers and their uses in healthcare security and safety.

This article presents a compre- hensive review of ways to min- imize threats and occurrences of violence in healthcare. The authors provide a number of resources available for devel- oping programs for mitigating and responding to such violence.

New tools such as cloud-based access control have created new opportunities for chang- ing the way that electronic se- curity systems can interact, according to the author He describes how such software has made it easier and less costly for health systems to cope with change and how IT and physical security can work together in this critical area.

Violence against healthcare staff members far exceeds the national rate of occupational violence and is never part of the job, the author says. In this article, he lists measures to consider for effectively pre- venting and mitigating as- saultive and threatening purposeful behavior by pa- tients, family members, and outsiders.

In this article, the author, one of the pioneers in the develop- ment of threat assessment systems, presents the core con- cepts that healthcare security directors will need to under- stand in helping employees who require assistance in dealing with stalking, domestic violence, or other potentially violent situations.

More organizations are mov- ing to patient treatment out- side of the traditional hospital and into practices and other off-site locations. As this tran- sition occurs, it is important to establish health and safety programs for the patients and staff at these locations. This is true even if the practices are not part of a hospital accredi- tation program as there are other regulatory agencies which affect the operations of these off-site locations.