PROtect Yourself! Empowering Tips & Techniques for Personal Safety: A Practical Violence Prevention Manual for Healthcare Workers

Once upon a time it was safe to go to work. Maybe that was just a fairy tale because the times have certainly changed. Increased violence has become part of our everyday life be it at home or at work. We read about it daily in the newspaper and are bombarded with violent stories from the television and radio.

PROtect Yourself! provides an integrative, non violent approach to dealing with physical aggression and verbal threat. Its method of information delivery is designed to help you develop greater awareness and vigilance, hone observational and judgment skills and to learn communication techniques to defuse potentially volatile situations. Physical interventions such as restraining techniques and break-away techniques may be mentioned throughout this manual but will not be expanded upon as they are beyond the scope of this manual.

In a professional nursing career that has spanned four decades, veteran nurse Rae Stonehouse RN shares sage advice for managing violence in healthcare settings.

PROtect Yourself! is a practical "how to" manual that will enable you to ...

* assess and identify disturbed/aggressive behaviour
* provide effective therapeutic interventions for the benefit of your clients
* develop winning attitudes to prevent aggressive behaviour
* utilize communication & leadership techniques to avoid client escalation and prevent disturbed behavior
* recognize the effects of your body language in resolving a crisis
* identify the influence that health care staff have on violence by a client
* take a proactive approach in developing worksite violence prevention protocols
* recognize a bully at work and develop strategies to minimize their damage
* recognize and support a colleague that is experiencing the effects of a critical incident