Falls Church, Va.-based Inova Health System formed a multidisciplinary team to promote safety and de-escalation after recording 648 instances of workplace violence in 2021. Since creating the team, violence in the system's emergency departments has decreased 60 percent.
The Safety Always for Everyone Team is composed of leaders in nursing, medicine, behavioral health, security, chaplains, pharmacy and other departments, according to a case study post from the American Hospital Association's Hospitals Against Violence initiative.
After creating the SAFE team, a workplace violence task force and a specialized security group for behavioral health patients, Inova saw "a reduction in the severity and frequency of injuries in its emergency departments and behavioral health units," AHA said.
The SAFE team manages violent incidents, debriefs with affected staff to ensure "healing and closure," and updates policies. The system also uses artificial intelligence technology that assesses security videos and notes possible risks.
"Instead of leveraging manpower against these kinds of potential threats, we're going to attempt to leverage technology instead," Rodney Miller, a former FBI special agent and Inova's assistant vice president for system security services and emergency management, said in the post.