APSF will be featuring Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention Video-Triggered Workshop “use cases” to enable learning, implementation tips and further creativity.
Use Case #1: Adapting the APSF Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention Videos into an Allyship Workshop
Odi Ehie, M.D., Associate Clinical Professor and Vice Chair of DEI at the UCSF Department of Anesthesiology had the opportunity to incorporate one of the APSF WPV videos into a two-hour session on allyship. Their program focuses on the “importance of allyship and examining how we model excellent patient care and allyship,” she explains.
The program utilized the APSF introduction video and the discrimination video (scenario and “take two”). To date, she has run her sessions three times. Not surprisingly, each session was unique in its own way. What has both surprised and impressed her is that the APSF materials “worked really well and sparked a lot of conversation.” Importantly, the trigger video “strips away the imagination… Instead of wondering how the other person must be feeling, we are actually witnessing the act.”
When asked further about her experience and implementation, Odi noted the silence in the room after the video played. She advises others utilizing these materials of the value of providing “space for emotion.” She importantly noted that although triggering, the APSF video script walked the fine line not to be so triggering as to cause trauma. As an additional safeguard, with all her programs, Odi is explicitly intentional about giving warning and permission to participants in advance. A participant can find themselves in a “stress zone” which can enter into a “panic zone,” she describes in her own words. “It’s important to give those present the permission and guidance to step away and receive support if they find themselves in the ‘panic zone.’”
In asking her how the video was most helpful in her allyship initiative, Odi stated, “the video really drove home the importance of modeling behavior and the significant harm…the impact of not doing anything.” She noted two examples where behavior was modeled as “powerful moments when the physician asked for help and when the colleague checked in with the physician.”
Odi agrees that one of the challenges will be creating a process to include other faculty. In the future, “ I would like to do this in a multidisciplinary setting. We are having ongoing conversations at our perianesthesia committee which has over 50 people including nursing leadership and other department chairs.”
“In the end, this is all about respect,” says Odi. “We are looking forward to seeing how this shapes culture and climate in our department.”
Use Case #2: APSF Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention videos are NOT just for anesthesia: supporting an organization-wide collegiality priority
“We were firing blanks until this week!” Dr. Charles Hummel, M.D., Ph.D , OB/GYN and Regional Physician Director for Patient Safety with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group (SCPMG) was recounting the success of a three- hour collegiality workshop session where he incorporated the APSF workplace violence “incivility” module for the first time. The program consisted of 40 surgeon participants; two-thirds were residents. “It landed… It was very relatable from the moment the video started. I could see it in the body language, the palpable silence and then the lively discussion.”
Collegiality is a strategic priority for SCPMG, and Charles has organizational leadership support for his work. He describes the formal structure. “There is an Assistant Director responsible for the collegiality priority within each area. That would be equivalent to a department Vice Dean at an academic institution.”
His regional programs have created a learning space to explore and normalize important behaviors consistent with collegiality, including supporting each other as a team by “talking each other up and learning to critique ideas and not the person.”
Charles utilizes the prompt questions from the APSF video facilitator guide during his workshops. The prompts encourage small group discussions that are the “most engaged we’ve seen.” In his first use of the video, Charles showed both “Take One” and “Take Two” together. Now, he allows for discussion after “Take one,” and advises other users to do the same, “The extra time between the takes results in quite a bit of impactful dialog.”
Charles’ participant colleagues — both staff and faculty– are enthusiastically supportive, commenting that the program “strikes a chord”, “getting to the heart of the problem” and “something we need to sustain.”
To sustain, Charles and his collaborators are planning a whole “suite of programs” and venues including one-hour lunch and learns, train-the- trainer programs and longitudinal sessions with interested teams. He has embedded the video training not only in the collegiality workshop sessions, but also in SCPMG’s Clinician-Patient Communication program. It is all part of his overall vision to “instill safety holistically with high reliability organization concepts (HRO), Team STEPPS and psychological safety.”
It is clear that Charles is building momentum. In an upcoming workshop, he is bringing together an interdisciplinary group of participants across several different specialties (tentatively planned to be Cardiology, Gastroenterology, and Hospital Medicine). “What is exciting about this potential is that we didn’t go to them, they came to us, asking for the program.” We look forward to checking back with SCPMG and Charles Hummel to learn how this training momentum is undoubtedly making a difference in teamwork, collegiality, communication, safety and well-being outcomes.
Use Case #3: A Virtual Success with the APSF Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention video program
“Let’s do this virtually!” Anesthesiologists, Denise Hall-Burton and Kristin M. Ondecko Ligda decided to bring the APSF Workplace Violence Workshop program virtually to their physician THRIVE annual 2025 program.
Dr. Hall-Burton is Assistant Professor and an Advisory Dean at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPMC) and Medical Student Coordinator at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Dr. Ondecko-Ligda is Assistant Professor, UPMC and Residency Site Director at UPMC, Mercy. Both are also graduates of the Stanford Wellness Officer Course and attended the APSF WPV workshop offering at ASA 2024. Their action item following ASA 2024 was “We need to take this back and do this at home!”
“Everything was very well received! Dr Hall-Burton enthusiastically shared their experience delivering the workshop program online. “We had breakout rooms to create the small group discussions, and we were able to wander into the rooms as facilitators.” However, she did share the caveat that having an IT person to seamlessly move people into breakout rooms and back into the central room helped to free them up and to make the program glitch-free.
Interestingly, the group that gathered did not have any anesthesiologist participants, making them realize “how applicable this was for folks outside of our specialty,” commented Dr. Ondecko-Ligda. Their program included physicians from the emergency department, internal medicine, and psychiatry as well as non-clinician participants. The non-clinician participants, in particular “helped me extend beyond my bubble, by realizing how these workplace violence behaviors of discrimination affect those without patient-facing responsibilities,” Dr. Hall-Burton reflected.
When asked how they might help others who might be in the process of utilizing these APSF workshop materials, Drs. Ondecko-Ligda and Hall Burton gave the following guidance:
- “Create a short power point slide deck before the introduction.”
- Since they had an audience that extended beyond the perioperative areas, this helped Drs. Ondecko-Ligda and Hall-Burton gain credibility and familiarity with the participants.
- “Know the policies in your own hospital. Do that homework in advance.”
- For example, at UPMC, physicians can be employed through two different pathways and there are relevant nuances between those policies.
- “Design for a diverse audience”
- They found that having clinicians outside of anesthesia and the perioperative domain as well as non-clinicians allowed discussion to focus less superficially on specific examples, and instead encouraged deeper questions, focused more on the issues.
As a result of their success, they now have requests to provide additional department-specific grand rounds with the material. Additionally, they plan to run another session at their THRIVE program in 2026, using another video in the series.
“It is fantastic that these materials can be used essentially right out of the box!” We thank Drs. Hall-Burton and Ondecko-Ligda for their praise and willingness to share their experience to encourage others to adopt and adapt these workshop materials for their own healthcare systems.
Are you interested in stopping the toxic effects of healthcare workplace violence?
Did you know…
-
- Anesthesiology faculty had the LARGEST proportions of reported harassment experiences in the past 12 months (both men: 21.3% and women: 52.6%)
– AAMC Report 2022
- Anesthesiology faculty had the LARGEST proportions of reported harassment experiences in the past 12 months (both men: 21.3% and women: 52.6%)
-
- 71.6 % of perioperative survey respondents (anesthesiologists, surgeons, CRNAs, CAAs, PACU RNs, OR RNs) report experiencing non-physical violence
– APSF Stoelting Conference 2021, The Joint Commission Journal for Patient Safety and Quality, Aug 2024
- 71.6 % of perioperative survey respondents (anesthesiologists, surgeons, CRNAs, CAAs, PACU RNs, OR RNs) report experiencing non-physical violence
APSF is responding to the call to action to eliminate healthcare workplace violence.
We have created video-triggered workshop materials and tools designed to increase awareness, take perspective and stimulate conversation on responses within your workplace. The tools are ideal for integration into staff meetings, grand rounds, in-service training, and existing workplace violence curricula.
Please continue to return to this website as we add resources and use-case examples. Together we can eliminate healthcare workplace violence.
Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention: Video-Triggered Workshop:
Full Video and Facilitator Guide Topics Include:
- Discrimination
- Physical Aggression
- Incivility
Request Immediate Access to the Videos and Facilitator Guides
Please fill out the form below to be emailed a link to the Workplace Violence Prevention videos and facilitator guides.
