Violet Education Bundle for Workplace Violence: A Quality Improvement Project

Abstract

Introduction:

Workplace violence (WPV) in healthcare is detrimental to staff and institutions. The prevalence of events continues to increase despite efforts to mitigate events. WPV is associated with psychological and physical consequences and has been attributed to healthcare workers leaving the field, further contributing to the shortage of frontline healthcare staff. Healthcare workers often underreport WPV events due to cultures of acceptance, lack of knowledge of resources, and feeling unsupported during or after an event.

Aim:

This quality improvement project aimed to implement a WPV bundle and evaluate the effectiveness of staff utilization of WPV resources, perceived confidence, knowledge, and support during and after WPV events in a general surgery unit.

Method:

A hybrid education bundle, named the Violet Education Bundle, includes education for nurses on de-escalation techniques, incident reporting, standardization of shift-change huddle reporting, and resources for psychological support. A single-group, pre- and post-test design was utilized, and a paired t-test was employed to test for statistical significance.

Results:

With 23.2% of staff (N = 20) completing both the pre-/post-survey (support, confidence, knowledge, and resource utilization sections) at both time points, no pre- to post-implementation outcome increases were statistically significant.

Conclusion:

Though the 60-day follow-up might have contributed to the null findings, nurses anecdotally expressed that they found the resources valuable and appreciated having them in one place. Future research should include an assessment of effectiveness for improving staff confidence, knowledge, perceived support, and reduced incidence and complications of WPV events over a sustained period of time.