A serious problem for health care professionals is the need to interact with patients who behave aggressively or are intoxicated or agitated, obstructive, or even make it impossible for medical staff to do their work, often endangering other patients or preventing the staff from caring about other patients. The police arrive at a time that usually suffices the intoxicated aggressors to accomplish their destructive deeds. Other patients of the Rescue wards, who suffer from severe, sometimes life-threatening conditions, have to wait until the aggressor is pacified. As a sidenote, this was exactly what happened to one of the Polish project staff when he was taken to a Hospital Rescue Ward after a massive heart attack. The International Labor Organization has recognized the medical profession as the second most vulnerable occupational group in the workplace (after employees of property protection). Our needs analysis proved that vilolence agains healthcare professionals is a serious problem across Europe. Below are some of our findings: Out of the persons who had had prior experience with patients only 5,9% said that they had never been verbally assaulted by patients and 62,5% were victims of physical assault by patients at least once. 83,4% of respondents claimed that healthcare professionals are more or much more likely to be victim of verbal and physical assault during work then other professions. 47,1% have never taken part in a course on how to deal with threatening situations in the workplace, while only 19,6% of them took part in a course catered for the medical professions at work or at university. The ones who had the opportunity to take part in such a course were mostly persons with over 20 years of experience, while most professionals with less than 10 years of experience answered in the negative, which would suggest that such courses are still hard to come by. Only 7,8% of respondents answered that healthcare professionals in their countries receive rather enough training in dealing with threatening situations in the workplace. 54,9% answered "definitely not" and 37,3% answered "rather not". To the question "Do you feel that a practical course to support health care professionals deal with aggressive patients would increase the overall safety of health care professionals?" 43,1% answered "definitely yes" and 47,1% answered "rather yes". This project aims to combine the knowledge and experience of international partners to create a comprehensive, interdisciplinary course for healthcare professionals in Europe. The project is addressed mainly to students of medical sciences, especially Medical Rescue. All partner universitiesas already decided to introduce the course as in their curricula of Medical Rescue and Nursing faculties. Parts of the course will also be taught to students of Internal Security. We will suggest other European universities to do the same. The course will be assigned ECTS points in accordance with the final shape of the course. The course will also be of great use to persons already working in healtcare. Under the terms of the Polish "Nursing and Midwife Professions Act", this will be a "training course" and we will also use this term for the education of medical rescuers or other healthcare personnel. Our dissemination workshops will make healthcare professionals in project countries aquainted with all intelelctual outputs. The course will be created specifically so that most of it can be taught via blended learning. The whole course materials will be available online on Moodle and the practical part will be accessible in the form of didactic and methodological materials, allowing a properly prepared instructor to conduct practical training. Modules: 1. Patient rights and rights of the health care professionals working with patients 2. Psychological and sociological aspects of dealing with an aggressive or stimulated patient 3. Negotiations with an aggressive person 4. Use of force by rescue teams The most important measure of the project's success will be its widespread dissemination. We will present the results of the project and propose free access to the learning and training materials for all HEIs teaching health science as well as to hospitals and other healthcare institutions. One of our partners - International Network for Health Workforce Education will disseminate the project through the wide network of members and partner institutions form universities to ministries of healthcare.
The chief goal of the "SAFEMEDIC" project was to improve the workplace safety of healthcare professionals by increasing their skills and competences in dealing with difficult situations. To achieve this, the project consortium designed and developed a complex multi-stakeholder, inter-disciplinary course for healthcare students, predominantly focused on paramedics and nurses. The didactic materials and project’s intellectual outputs may also be helpful for other health workers such as physicians and physiotherapists. The International Labor Organization has recognized the medical profession as the second most vulnerable occupational group in the workplace. Our needs analysis proved that violence against healthcare professionals is a serious problem across Europe. Below are some of our findings: Out of the persons who had had prior experience with patients only 5,9% said that they had never been verbally assaulted by patients and 62,5% were victims of physical assault by patients at least once. 83,4% of respondents claimed that healthcare professionals are more or much more likely to be victim of verbal and physical assault during work then other professions. 47,1% have never taken part in a course on how to deal with threatening situations in the workplace, while only 19,6% of them took part in a course catered for the medical professions at work or at university. Only 7,8% of respondents answered that healthcare professionals in their countries receive rather enough training in dealing with threatening situations in the workplace. 54,9% answered "definitely not" and 37,3% answered "rather not". To the question "Do you feel that a practical course to support health care professionals deal with aggressive patients would increase the overall safety of health care professionals?" 43,1% answered "definitely yes" and 47,1% answered "rather yes". This project combined the knowledge and experience of 6 international partners to create a comprehensive interactive online course for healthcare professionals on how to act in difficult situations at the workplace. The project was addressed mainly to students of medical sciences. All partner universities integrated the course in their regular teaching programme. We suggest other European universities to do the same. The course is around 80 hours of learning time and we suggest 4 ECTS points for anyone who finishes all 4 modules. The course will also be of great use to persons already working in healthcare. The course was created specifically so that most of it can be taught via blended learning. The whole course is available online on Moodle and the practical part will be accessible in the form of learning materials, allowing an instructor to conduct practical training. After logging onto the website https://moodle.safemedic.eu you will find yourself in the "cockpit" of five SAFEMEDIC courses, where you choose the language version of the course. The following versions are available: English, Czech, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovenian. The course materials can be used sequentially or selectively, depending on your needs. The learning content of the course is organized into the following modules: · Introductory section · Module 1-1: Violence and aggression - anthropological perspective · Module 1-2: Violence and aggression - psychological perspective · Module 2-1: Violence and aggressive behaviour - legal perspective · Module 2-2: Risk management · Module 3: Negotiations · Module 4: Techniques of de-escalating aggression in patients in a hospital setting To access the course, you need to create your account, which is done automatically and the only information you are expected to provide is your name and e-mail address. In this way you will acquire the “Student” status, which will give you access to all the materials needed by a learner. To use all the resources of the course you need the “Non-editing teacher” status – if you need it, please contact the administrator of the course. Every educational institution wishing to use the course as its own should contact the administrator, download the full package of the course free of charge and place it on its moodle platform (which will allow making any changes and/or amendments, enlisting students and observing their operations on the platform, etc.). Since almost all the videos are streamed, the whole course is compressed to only ca. 300 MB. A printed handbook was also created with instructions on how to access and use the online materials, how to prepare and conduct practical classes, and with many additional resources. The leader of the project – Lipinski University in Kielce, Poland (Wyższa Szkoła Ekonomii, Prawa i Nauk Medycznych im.prof. Edwarda Lipińskiego, www.wseip.edu.pl) is ready to provide teachers and students with the printed version of “The Guide”. The book, as many other educational materials, are also available for download from the course platform.