Impact of Patient-Engaged Video Surveillance on Nursing Workforce Safety: Patient Aggression/Violence.
Patricia A Quigley, Lisbeth Votruba, Jill Kaminski
PMID 32433143WHAT IT FOUND
Video monitoring staff reported preventing abusive incidents, but bedside nurses did not flag most patients who were aggressive or violent toward staff as a violence risk.
Key findings
01Monitoring staff reported preventing abusive incidents through verbal redirection or alarm activation.
02Most patients who exhibited aggressive or violent behavior toward nursing staff were not identified by bedside nurses as a risk for violence.
03Physical abuse incidents were documented more often than verbal abuse incidents among patient abuse toward nursing staff.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This was a descriptive program evaluation without a comparison group, so it cannot show that video surveillance caused fewer abusive events. The prevented abusive incidents were reported by monitoring staff and may not have been independently verified. It is unknown whether nurses used a risk-for-aggression screening tool to select patients. It is unknown how many monitoring technicians had clinical training to recognize, report, and safeguard patients and staff. Verbal abuse may have been underreported when physical abuse occurred, because staff may have reported only the highest level of violence. Only abusive events by a patient toward nursing staff were analyzed, so patient-to-visitor abuse and nonviolent behaviors are not captured. The reasons nurses enrolled patients in the surveillance program were unknown.
Declared interests
The data were exported by AvaSure, LLC, the company whose TeleSitter patient-engaged video surveillance program was studied. No further author disclosure is reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the prevented incidents as proof that video surveillance works for patient safety or workforce safety. This was a descriptive program evaluation without a comparison group, and the prevented events were reported by monitoring staff rather than independently measured.