Outbreaks of violence by patients and their relatives — fueled by long waiting times and incomprehensibly regulated patient calls — are part of the new hospital routine in emergency rooms. The Hessian broadcast and the Hessian hospital society accomplished now with more than 20 mechanisms a questioning. The result: at almost all clinics, both verbal and non-verbal aggression are the order of the day. This development entails increased psychological stress for hospital staff and leads to more and more employees wanting to resign from their jobs in the emergency room.
New safety concepts needed
To protect their staff, more and more clinics are designing new security concepts that include “panic rooms” and hiring security staff. Self-defense courses, de-escalation training and hidden or portable alarm buttons for employees are also part of some concepts.
Further measures for the emergency room safety concept
More and more clinics are interested in body-cams to expand their security concept. The cameras, which have been proven to have a de-escalating effect, are usually worn by security services and are used when situations need to be calmed down or assaults need to be recorded for prosecution. In most cases, however, it does not even come to the point that a camera recording is started: In many cases, the aggressor is already deterred when he sees the mere body cam or — in a second de-escalation step — his own reflection in the camera’s display and withdraws from the act.
Employee protection saves costs
Many hospitals have to pay for their own security costs. However, the investment in employee protection is worthwhile, because the expenses for (mostly long-term) employee absences after attacks are much higher. Body cams can therefore be used as a preventive measure and complement the existing security concepts for emergency rooms.
