Violence training applauded

By Jenn Marshall, Nanaimo News Bulletin

Violence prevention efforts paid off for the Vancouver Island Health Authority in the form of provincial recognition for its training program.

The health authority’s violence prevention team received an award of merit in the workplace health innovation category at the Health Employers Association of B.C.’s Excellence in B.C. Healthcare Awards earlier this month.

Tracy Larsen, safety team leader and violence prevention lead, said up until last year, VIHA imported violence training programs from the U.S. The training is mandated by WorkSafeBC.

But the programs did not have standardized language and the training pulled all workers away for lengthy periods of time – some workers who only needed two hours of training were sitting through an eight-hour training session.

“What our workers were telling us was that it was no longer sufficient,” she said. “We decided to develop our own curriculum in smaller, bite-sized pieces. We wanted to get everybody on the same page.”

The training has been divided up into four main sections and workers receive the training according to their risk levels. All new staff now receive the foundation training as part of orientation. Only those doing direct, hands-on care of patients receive up to Level 2 training.

Nanaimo Regional General Hospital’s busy emergency department staff have broken up the training into 15-minute in-services repeated throughout the week, said Larsen, enabling staff to receive training efficiently without taking them away from their regular duties for lengthy periods of time.

Level 3 training, which is to be rolled out at the larger health facilities, is for teams that specialize in dealing with violent incidents, said Larsen.

The new curriculum takes a train-the-trainer approach, she added, and in the past year, the health authority has trained more than 100 trainers. More than 3,000 staff have been trained in up to level 2 of the new program so far.

Larsen said a provincial curriculum has now been developed based on the VIHA model and will be available to all health authorities and organizations by September.

Holly Anderson, occupational health and safety representative for the Pacific Rim with the B.C. Nurses’ Union, said while it is a step forward that the program was developed, it was done because VIHA was ordered by WorkSafeBC to improve its violence prevention.

A few months ago, the health authority was fined $75,000 by WorkSafeBC for failing to take adequate measures to protect employees from workplace violence at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital and West Coast General Hospital.

The penalty stemmed from two separate WorkSafeBC investigations in 2005.

The new program is rolling out slowly, Anderson added, with only 3,000 of about 17,000 employees trained so far.

“Every site has violence issues,” said Anderson.