NUBE 2024

With rising incidents related to workplace violence, Emergency Department leaders at UCHealth in Fort Collins, CO found ourselves at a loss for how to best to support our staff in continuing to provide excellent care while facing increasing concerns of violent and disruptive behaviors within the workplace. After taking steps to address workflows within the department, we knew that we needed to get creative and look outside of the walls of the hospital to address the gap seen within our community. Partnering with local law enforcement and our cities municipal court system, we have developed the Healthcare Accountability Restorative Program (HARP) which aims to address common violations within the healthcare setting to hold individuals accountable while providing opportunities for treatment. By using a restorative justice model, HARP focuses on showing the impact the incident of violence has on the victim, community and the individual with opportunities to give back to each subsect with a variety of healthcare related tasks.

In this presentation we address what workplace violence is within healthcare, impacts these disruptions have on healthcare systems nation-wide, our experience with why violent and destructive acts are not being reported, and what we have created to address these gaps within our own community. We will discuss the development process of HARP along with the implementation of the program in April 2024. We will review our initial findings including barriers, opportunities for future growth, and the successes we have discovered along the way.

Learning Objectives:

Define workplace violence in the healthcare setting.

Identify common violations within the healthcare setting that would qualify for municipal court restorative justice programming.

Learn about the Healthcare Accountability Restorative Program (HARP) implemented in Fort Collins, Colorado and understand barriers and results from the first 8 months of programming post go-live in April 2024.