Assaultive behavior is a serious problem in health care. Nurses, nursing assistants, and other patients increasingly are becoming targets for patient assault. Costs of assaults are high, both in terms of dollars spent and clinical repercussions such as staff injury and lowered morale. This article describes the development of a protocol, in the form of clinical practice guidelines, for a community meeting to decrease assaultive behavior. Implications include use of the guidelines and the need to conduct either a before-and-after study or a comparison of one unit using the intervention with one not using it. There are also questions identified for further study that would test the broad effectiveness of the Violence Prevention Community Meeting guidelines.
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