Date
3-22-2024
Department
School of Nursing
Degree
Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)
Chair
Tonia Kennedy
Keywords
Violent Risk Assessment, Healthcare Violence, Violence Against Nurses, Violence Effects on Moral and Burnout, Raising Awareness Against Violence
Disciplines
Nursing
Recommended Citation
Dalton, Allyson, "Increasing the Awareness of Healthcare Violence Risk to Improve Safety in a Community Hospital" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 5274.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5274
Abstract
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020) identified the current incident rate for nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses, resulting in days out from work due to intentional injury within the healthcare industry. This statistic was revealed to be 10.4 per every 10,000 full-time employees. This figure is notably five times higher than the non-healthcare worker rate of 2.1 per every 10,000 full-time employees (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). The purpose of the identified scholarly project is to evaluate the overall impact the integration of a Violent Risk Assessment and utilization of resourceful safety measures have on raising awareness and reducing healthcare violence (HV) within a community hospital. Implementation of a Modified Violent Risk Assessment (mVRA) would include measures taken through the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to highlight a set of objective risk factors linked with incidents of violence to raise awareness, encourage use of safety resources, and decrease incidents of HV. Evaluation of the pre- and post-implementation survey results indicated a positive association and difference in mean scores in five out of the six key focus areas: differentiating between the types of violence and reducing the risk for injury with high-risk individuals, implementing safety interventions, as well as identifying risk factors associated with violence and recognizing individuals at risk for violence. With favorable outcomes promoting awareness of HV, implications for nursing practice reviews the importance of incorporating an algorithm into the EHR to bring awareness to an individual’s risk for HV.
