Background
Correctional Officers (COs) have among the highest injury rates and poorest health of all the public safety occupations. The HITEC-2 (Health Improvement Through Employee Control-2) study uses Participatory Action Research (PAR) to design and implement interventions to improve health and safety of COs.
Method
HITEC-2 compared two different types of participatory program, a CO-only “Design Team” (DT) and “Kaizen Event Teams” (KET) of COs and supervisors, to determine differences in implementation process and outcomes. The Program Evaluation Rating Sheet (PERS) was developed to document and evaluate program implementation.
Results
Both programs yielded successful and unsuccessful interventions, dependent upon team-, facility-, organizational, state-, facilitator-, and intervention-level factors.
Conclusions
PAR in corrections, and possibly other sectors, depends upon factors including participation, leadership, continuity and timing, resilience, and financial circumstances. The new PERS instrument may be useful in other sectors to assist in assessing intervention success.
There is perhaps no workplace hazard for which front-line health-care workers and patient safety are more closely linked than workplace violence. When workplace violence occurs, there are direct and indirect consequences for both staff and patients, including compromised patient care. The purpose of this article is to review risk factors for and interventions to reduce front-line health-care worker risk of injury, as well as overall strategies to improve worker and patient safety through comprehensive and participatory workplace violence-prevention programs. Numerous studies have documented risk factors and preventive factors for violence in the health-care setting. Considerably fewer have evaluated interventions designed to reduce these risks and subsequent injury. Front-line health-care workers should actively participate in developing and implementing programs to reduce the risk of injury to staff and patients.
Background: Incivility among workers in the health sector is recognized as an occupational hazard. The COVID-19 outbreak brought sudden and profound changes to many health care settings, many of which have been identified as antecedents to workplace incivility. The purpose of this retrospective study was to explore the experiences of registered nurses with workplace incivility, cyber-incivility, and incivility outside of work during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This mixed-methods study used convenience sampling. Data were collected from June to September 2020 via an online survey, which consisted of both closed- and open-ended questions. Participants were recruited from national nursing organizations and unions. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis for open-ended responses. Findings: A total of 526 nurses’ responses were included in the analysis. More than one third experienced greater incivility at work during the COVID-19 outbreak than before the pandemic (37.4%), and almost half (45.7%) said they witnessed more incivility than before the pandemic. Cyber-incivility and incivility outside of work were also issues. Qualitative results indicated that respondents felt they were on edge during this period. Other themes included leadership failure, fractured co-worker relationships, heightened incivility from patients and families, and hostility and ostracism from the general public Conclusion/Application to practice: Occupational health nurses, nursing leaders, and staff nurses need to work to restore relations that were fractured by incivility during the pandemic. In the future, improved preparedness, including establishing clear channels of communication, may lessen incivility by decreasing role stress and organizational chaos.
Objective: To examine National Corrections Collaborative (NCC) activities, as an outreach initiative, to advance corrections workplace health and safety research, practice, and policy through a series of applied Research to Practice (r2p) meetings informed by the Total Worker Health ® (Total Worker Health ® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) (TWH) strategy.
Methods:We mapped the coalescence of correctional worker health concerns, federal and national professional organization initiatives, and research activities that formed the NCC in 2014.
Results:During the NCC's 5-years of TWH activities, attendance increased, partner composition expanded, and themes of concern evolved. Partners were motivated to participate and work together towards building evidence for health and safety r2p.
Conclusions:A unified plea to the academic and federal research communities for assistance with better evaluation instruments, data linkages, and for adopting an integrated TWH approach to workforce health and wellbeing continue to drive NCC r2p activities.
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