Evidence-Based Design for Workplace Violence Prevention in Emergency Departments Utilizing CPTED and Space Syntax Analyses

Author(s):  
Nada El-Hadedy ◽  
Momen El-Husseiny

Background: Workplace violence (WPV) is a prevalent phenomenon in Egyptian emergency departments (EDs), an issue that threatens an already scarce resource of healthcare workers. Furthermore, changes and modifications are continuously taking place in hospitals, with no consideration to the important role those changes might play in reducing or encouraging WPV behaviors. Objective: This research serves as an initial step in offering answers on how the environmental design of an ED can be modified and manipulated to prevent and control WPV. Accordingly, the objective of this research is to identify the environmental features that potentially influence WPV in the ED. This could provide healthcare designers with the necessary tools to forecast the location of WPV and define the measures needed for a safer working environment. Method: The study comprised a hybrid method approach that evaluates the implementation of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) through field observation and combined with space syntax analyses (SSAs) of the spatial attributes. Results: The results showed a positive relationship between the spatial properties (high integration and connectivity values) and WPV locations. The results also demonstrated that situational factors as natural surveillance played an important role in displacing the WPV locations. Conclusions: The contribution of this research lies in elaborating the SSA and CPTED from a conceptual to an empirical level. Combining those tools will help identify the location of WPV in the ED and hence facilitates successful future environmental intervention strategies.

Author(s):  
Jose Miguel Giménez Lozano ◽  
Juan Pedro Martínez Ramón ◽  
Francisco Manuel Morales Rodríguez

The present study aims analyze the risk factors that lead to high levels of burnout among nurses and physicians and the protective factors that prevent them. Thus, it is also intended to explore the possible correlation between physical and verbal violence produced at work and the symptoms derived from burnout. Methods: The search was carried out on the Scopus, PubMed and Web of Science databases between 2000 and 2019 (on which date the bibliographic search ends). Descriptive studies estimating the prevalence of workplace violence and risk and protective factors and burnout were included. An adapted version of the Downs and Black quality checklist was used for article selection. 89.6 percent of the studies analysed were in the health sector. There is a significant correlation between burnout symptoms and physical violence at work. On the one hand, the risk factors that moderate this correlation were of structural/organisational type (social support, quality of the working environment, authoritarian leadership, little autonomy or long working days, etc.) and personal type (age, gender, nationality or academic degree, etc.). On the other hand, protective factors were the quality of the working environment, mutual support networks or coping strategies. The results were analysed in-depth and intervention strategies were proposed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barak Ariel ◽  
Mark Newton ◽  
Lorna McEwan ◽  
Garry A. Ashbridge ◽  
Cristobal Weinborn ◽  
...  

Workplace violence is a major health and safety phenomenon. We investigate whether body-worn cameras (BWCs) can achieve a cost-effective reduction of assaults. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with train stations exposed to the highest recorded assault rates against staff in England and Wales. Treatment members of staff were equipped with BWCs and control staff were unexposed to BWCs. Official records of assaults against treatment and control staff as well as against any employee at the station complexes are used as outcome measures. Results suggest 47% significant overall reduction in the odds of assaults against BWCs-equipped staff at treatment versus controls locations—or approximately two versus four assaults, on average, per station. In addition, we found a 26% significant reduction in assaults against all employees in the treatment versus control station complexes—9 versus 12 assaults, on average, per station—suggesting that BWCs have a spatial diffusion of benefits effects. We estimate that BWCs can reduce at least 3,000 working days per year lost because of physical violence at work. We conclude that BWCs provide substantial benefits for staff health and safety to those who are equipped with the devices as well as to staff in the vicinity of BWC-equipped employees.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-77
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Perroni ◽  
Eric Mol ◽  
Anthony Walker ◽  
Calogero Alaimo ◽  
Laura Guidetti ◽  
...  

Background: In order to stay safe, and to successfully complete their work, firefighters have to constantly assess and process large numbers of sensory stimuli and adapt to the inherent risks present in the working environment. Objective: The purposes of the present preliminary study were to analyse the speed of Reaction Time responses (RT) of Italian Firefighters and to compare their cognitive responses with non-firefighting subjects. Methods: Anthropometric (weight, height and BMI) and RT (time-to-completion –TTC-, mean of reaction time –MRT-, and errors made -E-) evaluations were administered at 16 volunteers (Age: 40.3 ± 6.7 yrs; BMI: 23.8 ± 2.3 kg/m2) divided in Firefighters (FG) and Control (CG) groups. RT test consisted of 3 trials (T1 = 1s of stimulus duration and 1s interval between stimulus and the other; T2 = 0.5s of stimulus duration and 1s interval between stimulus and the other; T3 = 0.5s of stimulus duration and 0.5s interval between stimulus and the other). Mann Whitney U test between groups was applied to asses differences (p ≤ 0.05) in TTC, MRT, and E while Friedmann test and Dunn-Sidak post hoc were used to evaluate significant differences in the 3 trials in each variable of each group. Results: No significant differences based on anthropometric parameters were observed between groups. Despite no significant differences emerged for TTC and MRT between groups, we observed significant differences in E between groups (CG = 4; FG =12) and in the 3rd condition in each variable of each group. Conclusion: Workout programs that integrate reaction time training with job performance should be created to increase job performance.


2021 ◽  
pp. 24-50
Author(s):  
Silvia Doria

The world of working is changing and the technological transformations are playing a relevant role in this change. In particular, new technologies are making the physical boundaries of traditional offices increasingly permeable, allowing the diffusion of New Ways of Working (Demerouti et al., 2014; Koops and Helms, 2014), such as smart working. This paper, based on a qualitative research and discursive interviews, intends to reflect on the introduction and top-down management of smart working within a banking institution. At the same time, it aims to grasp the role attributed to and played by technology in its implementation. Starting from the two reconstructed stories, I shall show if and how the innovations introduced whereby technologies enable us to work remotely, are changing existing power relations and what control dynamics emerge from the field.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anqi Chen ◽  
Scott Fielding ◽  
X. Joan Hu ◽  
Patrick McLane ◽  
Andrew McRae ◽  
...  

Abstract Background This paper describes and compares patient flow characteristics of adult high system users (HSUs) and control groups in Alberta and Ontario emergency departments (EDs), Canada. Methods Annual cohorts of HSUs were created by identifying patients who made up the top 10% of ED users (by count of ED presentations) in the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System during 2011–2016. Random samples of patients not in the HSU groups were selected as controls. Presentation (e.g., acuity) and ED times (e.g., time to physician initial assessment [PIA], length of stay) data were extracted and described. The length of stay for 2015/2016 data was decomposed into stages and Cox models compared time between stages. Results There were 20,343,230 and 18,222,969 ED presentations made by 7,032,655 and 1,923,462 individuals in the control and HSU groups, respectively. The Ontario groups had higher acuity than the Alberta groups: about 20% in the Ontario groups were from the emergent level whereas Alberta had 11–15%. Time to PIA was similar across provinces and groups (medians of 60 min to 67 min). Lengths of stay were longest for Ontario HSUs (median = 3 h) and shortest for Alberta HSUs (median = 2.2 h). HSUs had shorter times to PIA (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.03; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.02,1.03), longer times from PIA to decision (HR = 0.84; 95%CI 0.84,0.84), and longer times from decision to leaving the ED (HR = 0.91; 95%CI 0.91,0.91). Conclusions Ontario HSUs had higher acuity and longer ED lengths of stay than the other groups. In both provinces, HSU had shorter times to PIA and longer times after assessment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Davey ◽  
Veda Ravishankar ◽  
Nikita Mehta ◽  
Tania Ahluwalia ◽  
Janice Blanchard ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Ralph B. Taylor

This chapter discusses research and theorizing about the crime impacts of the physical environment, relating it to past reviews of scholarship in this area, and highlighting the crucial question of causality. It introduces key stumbling blocks in community criminology that must be addressed before scholarship can advance on the crucial causality question. Environmental criminology in a deep sense represents a field within a broader field of community criminology. The chapter underscores just a few of the most important recent works in four select areas within the physical environment-crime scholarship: space syntax, facilities and land use, accessibility/permeability, and crime prevention through environmental design/defensible space. The final section sketches one possible avenue for future research which can address these concerns.


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