Читать книгу PROtect Yourself! Empowering Tips & Techniques for Personal Safety: A Practical Violence Prevention Manual for Healthcare Workers - Rae Stonehouse - Страница 26

The literature suggests that just as many patients with pre-assaultive behaviours (verbal aggression, high activity level and invasion of personal space) never go on to assault staff as those that do. So what is it that drives the 50% of violent prone clients to assault staff?

It is generally felt that there is a “trigger” that sets off the physical aggression. It is important that you have an awareness of potential “triggers” in your working environment.

One of the strongest triggers is activated when the client perceives that they are being treated with disrespect or unfairly. When healthcare workers are tired or overworked they may become insensitive to their client’s needs. Staff interaction with their clients can thus become argumentative, authoritarian, and in some cases threatening. To maintain our personal safety we must be able to conduct a self-assessment and identify when we are displaying verbally aggressive behaviour and are becoming part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

Triggers can include:

•Intoxication

•Loss of a central love relationship

•Acute emotional crisis

•Loss of personal power

•Loss of face

•Fear

•Pain

•Physiological states e.g. hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, boredom and unstructured activity

•Staff rejections

•Rejection

•Disrespect

•Crowding

•Irritating patients and staff

•Tasks a patient may not want to perform

These personal attitudes have been effective when working with disturbed individuals:

•Alertness

•Sensitiveness

•Self-Awareness

•Confidence

•Respectfulness

•Belief in Equality

•Genuineness