Health care has turned a keen eye toward attempting to put a stop to violence that occurs inside the hospital's corridors. But what about the aggression directed at caregivers in a home-based setting?
That's the topic of a new podcast created by the American Hospital Association's Workforce Center, and posted this week to the AHA's Hospitals Against Violence resource page. In it, Joyce Bulman, vice president of clinical operations at Hospice of the Valley in Phoenix, discusses ways to protect home health care workers from possible violent incidents.
Two of her most important pieces of advice are to be aware of your surroundings (know your exit route; keep car keys on your person, etc.) and make sure to ask patients and their families the tough questions (i.e., Do you have any guns or drugs in the house?).
"It’s important for us to be nonjudgmental," Bulman tells Veronika Riley, senior director of the AHA's Workforce Center. "We’re taking care of patients in their home setting. We want to meet them where they’re at, but making sure that we have very clear boundaries of what can be out in the home when our staff are present, and what we would prefer to not have to see when we come into the home.”
Be sure to give the 18-minute podcast a listen, and for more on how hospitals are combating violence in their communities, check out H&HN's March cover story, which explores lessons learned from recent mass-casualty incidents in Dallas and Orlando, Fla.
