Journal of professional nursing : official journal of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing
-
Controlled Clinical Trial
Training efforts to reduce reports of workplace violence in a community health care facility.
The objective of this study was to measure reports of workplace violence (WPV) after an online training program on WPV for health care workers. Recognition of the prevalence of WPV (physical, emotional-verbal, and sexual) suggests a great need for employers to provide training to all health care workers as a first-line effort to reduce or prevent WPV. A 3-hour online training program for WPV was offered to 43 workers attending an informational session. ⋯ Although differences existed among training participants and control subjects before training, significance could not be achieved among the three groups owing to validity threats, including subject mortality, diffusion between groups, selection bias, and small sample size. However, the finding that training can make a difference is important and encourages replication of this study with a larger sample size and a larger setting. Finding high rates of emotional-verbal abuse across work areas and support for training benefits enhance the need for training programs with an increased focus on emotional-verbal WPV.