Workplace violence is recognized as a significant occupational hazard in the healthcare sector, however little is known about the magnitude of the problem and effective prevention strategies in the home health care workplace. Home healthcare workers are exposed to many of the same hazards associated with workplace violence as their counterparts in the hospital environment, but they face additional risk related to the nature of the way their work is organized. Their work is often highly unpredictable and they have little or no control of the physical work environment. The overall objective of this exploratory research project is to collect pilot data to inform study design, sampling strategy, and measurement of workplace violence in the home health work place. The pilot project will develop measures for risk factors, threats and assaults and current violence prevention strategies. This project will also develop measures to assess current violence prevention strategies in home health and their coherence with OSHA's violence prevention guidance for home healthcare. This pilot project will provide a conceptual and methodological blueprint for a large-scale investigation of workplace violence in home health care vial the following specific aims: 1) develop valid and reliable measures of potential risk factors for workplace violence in the home health workplaces, 2) ascertain empirical sampling parameters of the relevant dependent variables, threats and assaults, in home health, 3) describe the frequency and severity of threats and assault in a sample of Maryland home health work places, and 4) develop measure to assess current violence prevention strategies in home health and their coherence to OSHA guidelines for a comprehensive violence prevention program.
| McPhaul, Kathleen; Lipscomb, Jane; Johnson, Jeffrey (2010) Assessing risk for violence on home health visits. Home Healthc Nurse 28:278-89 |
