The Wisconsin Hospital Association’s (WHA’s) Council on Workforce Development met May 21 and picked up work the group had started before COVID, including workplace violence prevention strategies.
In November 2019, the council completed an assessment of workplace violence in member settings and the strategies and resources Wisconsin hospitals and health systems are devoting to violence response and prevention. The group welcomed back Mike Cummings, a health care security consultant, to its May 2021 meeting.
Cummings led the group in a review of its assessment findings. The participants validated their findings and formulated implementation plans for the top recommendations from the November 2019 assessment.
Over the next few months, WHA will complete these implementation plans by creating options to share workplace violence reduction policies, procedures, templates and resources, perhaps via the WHA member portal. WHA and the Council on Workforce Development will also provide opportunities for hospitals and health systems to share solutions they’ve implemented to reduce and prevent violence in their settings.
As part of its review, the council had an opportunity to utilize a COVID-19 lesson learned—a customizable security training program used by the Hospital Emergency Response Coalitions (HERCs) to rapidly provide guidance and skills to registration staff and screeners confronted by more aggressive behavior when asking visitors and patients to comply with COVID safety requirements. Council members agreed this type of education is an important component of safety training for hospitals big and small, rural and urban.
The council’s May meeting also featured a presentation by Heroes for Healthcare Community Engagement Manager Joyce Mallory, who shared information about the organization’s initiative to grow the health care workforce by facilitating military members’ integration into the civilian workforce. More information about Heroes for Healthcare can be found
here.
The council also discussed the new permanent statutory change that enables health care professionals licensed in another state to immediately start practice in Wisconsin while their Wisconsin license application is being processed. WHA General Counsel Matthew Stanford noted that the state is really leveraging the credentialing processes already in place at health care employers. A summary of this new Wisconsin law can be found in the legislative and regulatory summaries posted within the legal resources section of the
WHA member portal.
WHA Senior Vice President of Workforce and Clinical Practice
Ann Zenk can be contacted for further information about the WHA Council on Workforce Development.