Health sector personnel are at a considerable und largely underestimated risk of violence in today’s health care environment. Violence includes physical assaults, verbal abuse, hostility, sexual and racial harassment, bullying, mobbing. It can arise between patients, visitors, intruders and even coworkers. The manifold of different human intentions in an environment where people are in need and under stress let a high statistical probability arise, that an outbreak of violence occurs.

This workshop will deal with the theme of workplace violence as something, that cannot be completely avoided, but the probability of which can be considerably reduced. Violence in the health care environment can be dealt with effectively by implementing a concept which includes a methodologically coordinated set of steps to deal in advance, at the event of violence taking place, in the aftermath of an incident of violence and setting up an aggression policy at work.

Workshop with a 4-step program
The workshop picks up the problems und dynamics of violence in the health care sector in order to reflect und evaluate possibilities to encounter and reduce the risk of workplace violence. It offers a 4-step program:

• A Definition of Violence in today’s healthcare sector. Where it occurs and how it evolves
• What happens when violence takes place – dynamics of violence
• A triple structure of an effective concept in preventing workplace violence: structure, concept, training and knowledge
• Possible steps on the way to a concept of violence prevention for organizations in the health care sector

Along with an input, participants will further develop, on the basis of the triple structure of a concept on violence prevention, their own knowledge and awareness for the subject of preventing workplace violence und aggression in the health care sector.

Ellen Delvaux, PhD, KU Leuven Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Groep IDEWE

Kai Hochscheid, Dr. phil, Dr. Hochscheid & Partner Institut für Organisations- und Personalentwicklung