OAHHS Fall/Winter 2018

17 Fall/Winter 2018 around the country and the world to do the same. From the start, the WPV Project sought buy-in from all corners of Oregon’s health care landscape and from every kind of hospital employee, from administrator to nurse to foodservice worker, says OAHHS Director of Rural Health and Federal Issues Katie Harris: “All hospitals are facing workplace violence issues in some form or fashion. And no one hospital or stakeholder has the answer. Being able to learn from each other and collaborate together on these issues was so incredibly helpful. I call it ‘Harnessing the collective power of the hospitals.’” Guided by Occupational Health Nurse and Certified Professional Ergonomist Lynda Enos, and working together with SEIU-Local 49, The Oregon Nurses Association, multiple other organizations, and OAHHS member hospitals, the group studied existing approaches to reducing violence-related injuries in hospitals, identified issues most relevant to Oregon’s hospitals, and experimented with evidence-based approaches to addressing them. Just as LaRochelle suspected, sizable gaps in collective knowledge and practice existed, says Harris: “We really reviewed everything out there across the U.S. and also in other countries. Workplace violence is a hot topic right now, but there haven’t been a lot of resources and tools for hospitals to use; just pieces here and there.” Hoping to fill those gaps, WPV participants drilled down on the factors contributing to workplace violence, from clinical risk factors like patient histories of violence, substance abuse, and mental illness to socio-economic continues 