NIOSH Seeks Extension of Violence Research Project
Six states have enacted laws to reduce violence against health care workers by requiring workplace violence prevention programs, but little is understood about how effective their laws are at reducing violence against health workers, the NIOSH notice states.
NIOSH proposed an extension for one of its research projects in a Nov. 22 Federal Register notice. The project, Workplace Violence Prevention Programs in NJ Healthcare Facilities (OMB Control Number 0920-0914, with expiration set for March 31, 2018), was originally approved to evaluate nursing homes' compliance with the New Jersey Violence Prevention in Health Care Facilities Act and the effectiveness of the regulations in that law for reducing assault injuries to nursing home workers.
NIOSH planned to evaluated these at 50 hospitals and 40 nursing homes, to conduct a nurse survey, and to conduct a home health care aide survey. NIOSH completed the data collection activities for the hospitals, the nurse survey, and the aide survey, but it completed only 20 out of 40 nursing home interviews. It is now requesting the extension to complete it by having a contractor conduct face-to-face interviews with the chairs of the Violence Prevention Committees in 20 nursing homes (10 in New Jersey and 10 in Virginia) who are in charge of overseeing compliance efforts.
The notice says the purpose of the interviews is to measure compliance with those states' regulations: violence prevention policies, reporting systems for violent events, a violence prevention committee, a written violence prevention plan, violence risk assessments, post-incident response, and violence prevention training.
The notice says health care workers are nearly five times more likely to become victims of violence than workers from all other industries combined, and while health care workers are not at particularly high risk for job-related homicide, nearly 60 percent of all nonfatal assaults occurring in private industry take place in health care.
Six states have enacted laws to reduce violence against health care workers by requiring workplace violence prevention programs, but little is understood about how effective their laws are at reducing violence against health workers, it states.