Workplace Violence Training for Nurses

Dates: 09/01/2007 - 03/31/2008
Status: Phase I
Funding Agency: CDC / NIOSH
Reference: 1R43OH009180-01

ABSTRACT
Research has shown that nurses are at very high risk of being victims of workplace violence. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing issued a Position Paper in 1999 emphasizing the inclusion of violence-related content as essential content in nursing curricula, yet training remains incidental. The American Nurses Association, the International Council of Nurses and the American Academy of Nursing, as well as health care labor unions, have called for increased research to identify effective interventions.

Workplace Violence Training for Nurses is a two-part multi-media training package for professional (registered) nurses working in a hospital setting. It includes a web-based training program to help nurses understand, assess, prevent, and respond to violence in the workplace. The self-paced curriculum will make extensive use of video to share expert opinions and victims’ experiences. It will also utilize video to provide case studies, and to demonstrate effective strategies for assessment, prevention and response, thus allowing for behavior modeling. Self-administered tests for each training module will help to track acquisition of essential knowledge, attitudes, and skills. Continuing education credits will be awarded to program graduates. An optional train-the-trainers module will be available for nurses who aspire to train others. A trainer toolkit will help nurse trainers conduct workshops (e.g., in-service training) on workplace violence. Drawing from video elements of the web-based training program, the toolkit will include an introductory DVD containing the overview and interviews with experts and victims. A second DVD will contain a selection of video case studies and examples from the web-based training program for viewing and discussion. Also included will be a workshop leader’s guide and learning assessment tools. Workshop graduates will be invited to take the full web-based training program for continuing education credits.

In Phase I, the producers will develop the curriculum and produce home page and a functional prototype of one module of the web training, which will then be evaluated using focus groups representative of the target audiences. Evaluators will use well-documented qualitative techniques to analyze focus group data.

This project will advance the knowledge and training of hospital-based nurses by (a) helping them to understand, assess, prevent, and respond to violence in the workplace and (b) providing tools to help nurse trainers conduct workshops on workplace violence. Additionally, it will present an opportunity to gather longitudinal data from nurses who have taken the training, in order to assess knowledge retention and training effectiveness over time.