Fri Nov 7, 2025 @ 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Patient-Centered Agitation Care and Workplace Violence Prevention in the Emergency Settings: Two Sides of the Same Coin?
Emergency Departments (EDs) are seeing a rising number of visits for behavioral emergencies. As a result, clinicians and health workers face increasing safety threats from workplace violence while treating episodes of acute agitation, defined as excessive psychomotor activity leading to aggressive or violent behavior in patients. Historically, experts have addressed agitation and workplace violence as two separate issues, with separate management and prevention strategies. A handful of researchers have begun to question this approach citing potential conflict between patient and staff safety goals within the recommended guidelines for management and prevention of acute agitation and workplace violence. In this context, we propose that agitation and workplace violence are not two separate issues, but rather, “two sides of the same coin”.
In this presentation, a multi-institutional panel of violence prevention experts will facilitate a rigorous discussion of updated scientific evidence and new research published by our team for preventing workplace violence and managing acutely agitated patients. The panel will draw from their own research, programmatic expertise, and clinical experience to provide a rigorous discussion of latest evidence and new research on both topics, presenting evidence and best practices on trauma-informed, systems-based principles that will help guide shed light on a rising but understudied clinical issue and provide strategies to improve safety for staff while caring for this vulnerable patient population.
Visit the WSHA’s Workplace Violence Webpage for Additional Information
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