MyMichigan Health Launched Anti-Workplace Violence Campaign

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, about 75% of nearly 25,000 workplace assaults reported annually occurred in the healthcare and social service setting.

Sherry Warczynski the Manager of Regulatory Compliance and Infection Prevention says, “The nursing industry actually has the highest rate of violence as compared to any other industry. However, now there’s a lot more attention to it.” Sherry adds, “We know that it doesn’t have to be that way and we are working to keep our employees safer and encourage them to report incidents when they happen.”

Sue Lennon the Director of Employee Health and Wellness said, “I would add, that is one of the very first educational initiatives our task force did was to do some poster presentations and really encourage staff to report any kind of incidents to kind of help decreasing normalizing certain behaviors.”

Since the campaign launch back in April of this year, Sue and Sherry have noticed an uptick in reports of workplace assaults or violence, more so the verbal assaults. Sherry said, “I think one of the things that doesn’t get reported as often are those verbal assaults. So, if somebody strikes me, or hits me, or spits at me, or punches or punches me, I think staff are more likely to report those things. So it’s also encouraging them to report those kind of verbal assaults.”

When a victim does step forward and reports their experience or if there’s departments with higher risk of an incident, MyMichigan Health does a really good job in providing specific training programs in collaboration with the Crisis Prevention Institution. Sue stated, “We’ve offered several educational programs, active shooter training, department specific trainings, and we’re working on more departments specific trainings.”