Imagine dedicating several years of time, earning low pay to study for your career, only to be verbally and physically assaulted as a regular part of your vocation.
As specialists in working with trauma and managing stress we have experience of working with staff in a wide range of public facing situations including the health sector and we believe it is vital to equip staff with the skills and infrastructure to make sure their work is safe and free from harassment of this kind.
Verbal assaults are perceived as extremely threatening and physical assaults are categorized as a dangerous or traumatic situation. However, not all people become traumatized when exposed to violence, this very much depends on their resilience and this is why resilience awareness and training can be so vital for people who may be exposed to these potentially threatening situations on an ongoing basis. Following an attack, some people want to get straight back to work, while for others it takes time to recover and process. Others may even decide to change careers. As assaults are a widescale and growing problem within the NHS, the cost of this is undoubtedly growing.
This is reflective of a complex social problem which often involves very highly charged situations involving fear and/or shock at the illness of a family member, increased customer expectations in a 24-hour society leading to demands for instant information, coupled with tiredness and/or stress, can add up to a situation where conflict is inevitable.
As part of a wide ranging programme to tackle anti-social behaviour which might include communicating zero tolerance policies to violence. Educating teams on managing difficult situations and noticing signs of diminishing resilience can be very effective as well as helping staff diffuse conflict situations and also review their culture, policies and procedures. We also train managers and staff how to recognise and support people suffering from trauma, increasing skills around this area helps people take a step back and be aware of their own responses.
Our training is not about making people ‘victims’ but rather to normalise traumatic response symptoms and enable people to build their resilience and return to living a normal life as quickly as possible after an incident.
We have experience of providing training for staff working in GP’s surgeries facing violence from patients. The training was designed to help them manage difficult conflicts. They were able to understand the stress cycle and how secondary traumatisation can cause mayhem in internal (personal) and external (inter-personal) communication systems.
One of the outcomes of that training was that it provided a challenge to the belief that ‘it is wasting manager’s and/or police time to report the incident’, and delegates spent time coming up with action plans and policies to make it ‘safer’ and more acceptable for staff to talk about incidents’ in the workplace.This in itself encourages team resilience, as good support can be a factor in helping people recover and regain confidence.
Having some knowledge and support around managing stress, creating a work/life balance and healthy life habits can go a long way to preventing burn out and despondacy. This does not make the job any less dangerous, but does give staff the message that managers akcknowledge this situation and care about it.
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