De-Escalation Training for Managing Patient Aggression in High-Incidence Care Areas

Abstract

Health care personnel who have close, face-to-face patient contact experience more workplace violence (WPV) than employees in other fields. Certain health care departments (i.e., high-incidence care areas) have elevated rates of WPV that can have adverse emotional, physical, and financial consequences for patients, employees, and institutions. Health care workers need de-escalation training to efficiently manage patient aggression while also safeguarding patients' dignity and patient–provider trust. The current Plan, Do, Study, Act quality improvement project used insights from an in-depth literature review to create a 1-hour, evidence-based, in-service de-escalation training for personnel from high-incidence care areas. A pre/post design was used to evaluate participants' responses to the Confidence Coping with Patient Aggression Instrument. Post-training, participants reported significantly increased feelings of safety regarding potential patient aggression ( p = 0.001) and more efficacy regarding their aggression management techniques ( p = 0.039). Based on the training's results, recommendations were made for future institutional de-escalation initiatives. [ Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 61 (8), 17–24.]