BACKGROUND: Documented incidents of violence provide the foundation for
any workplace violence prevention program. However, no published research to date has
examined stakeholders' preferences for workplace violence data reports in
healthcare settings. If relevant data are not readily available and
effectively summarized and presented, the likelihood is low that they will
be utilized by stakeholders in targeted efforts to reduce violence.
OBJECTIVE: To discover and describe hospital system stakeholders' perceptions of
database-generated workplace violence data reports.
PARTICIPANTS: Eight hospital system stakeholders representing Human Resources,
Security, Occupational Health Services, Quality and Safety, and Labor in a
large, metropolitan hospital system.
METHODS: The hospital system utilizes a central database for reporting adverse
workplace events, including incidents of violence. A focus group was
conducted to identify stakeholders' preferences and specifications for
standardized, computerized reports of workplace violence data to be
generated by the central database. The discussion was audio-taped,
transcribed verbatim, processed as text, and analyzed using stepwise content
analysis.
RESULTS: Five distinct themes emerged from participant responses: Concerns,
Etiology, Customization, Use, and Outcomes. In general, stakeholders wanted
data reports to provide ``the big picture,'' i.e., rates of occurrence;
reasons for and details regarding incident occurrence; consequences for the
individual employee and/or the workplace; and organizational efforts that
were employed to deal with the incident.
CONCLUSIONS: Exploring stakeholder views regarding workplace violence summary
reports provided concrete information on the preferred content, format, and
use of workplace violence data. Participants desired both epidemiological
and incident-specific data in order to better understand and work to prevent
the workplace violence occurring in their hospital system.
