In mid-February, a group of 17 Baptist nurses, EMTs and ambulance crews gathered for a four-day “Nonviolent Crisis Intervention” training hosted by the Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI). Following the training, the group joins a global network of CPI-certified trainers who then train their coworkers about safe intervention techniques to use during crisis situations.
“About half are new trainees and half are already certified trainers. The ‘Nonviolent Crisis Intervention’ training program has recently been updated to further support health care’s changing patient care landscape. Therefore, we feel it is vital to have our existing trainers re-certified so that all 19 of our trainers are working from the same model. This will provide a minimum of one trainer at each of our hospitals and bring all of our trainers up to date with the new course content and model from CPI. CPI’s Nonviolent Crisis Intervention program is widely used across the country with ours being health care focused,” said Nicholas Lewis, director of employee safety for Baptist.
Team members face several scenarios that can easily escalate, and Baptist has seen an increase in these instances. “In the last three years, we’ve seen a 4.8 percent increase in person-to-person events,” said Nicholas.
Besides behavioral health issues, nursing staff can face combative patients in the ICU due to medicines, gastric tubes, and ventilators. Often, the patient isn’t cognizant of a combative behavior. Ironically, the ICU waiting room and delivery rooms can become tense as family members’ emotions run high.
Tom Kurlick, Baptist’s director of operational improvement, was one of the class participants and has experienced crisis situations during his career. “While we see behavioral health problems in a clinical setting, aggressive behavior isn’t just behavior, but it can get physical. Patients, family and visitors to our hospitals can become physical when they are in different stages of treatment or emotional crisis. The stress of a family member being hospitalized or a bad health prognosis can cause uncontrolled physical aggression to other family members or hospital staff.”
Participants came to Baptist Memphis where they spent the first two days learning to identify behavior levels, appropriate responses, verbal and nonverbal communication and safety measures. The last two days focused on CPI’s intervention techniques designed to help team members de-escalate situations.
When they return to their respective work environments, the newly trained will play an important role in carrying the nonviolent message forward by training their own team members.