Koorooman House
Early this year members working for Koorooman House nursing home in Leongatha reported a number of incidents of occupational violence and aggression to ANMF (Vic Branch) and to Gippsland Southern Health Service management.
The ANMF (Vic Branch) worked collaboratively with the nursing home’s management and ANMF members to put in place measures to prevent and manage occupational violence and aggression (OVA).
An OVA working group was established, with members including ANMF staff, Koorooman House Job Reps, an HSR and Gippsland Southern Health Service management.
The working group came up with the following measures:
- Providing walkie talkies to staff as an interim measure, while the purchase of personal duress alarms was investigated.
- Providing de-escalation training for staff members.
- Reviewing the Koorooman House processes for resident admission and behaviour management.
- Managerial training at Koorooman House in critical incident response, and responding to Code Greys, Code Blacks, and incident investigation procedures.
- Developing an occupational violence and aggression assessment tool which will be used across the organisation.
- Providing training for staff in how to fill out a Riskman incident report, with particular emphasis on occupational violence and aggression reporting.
- Conducting a mock critical incident exercise, to include night duty supervisors and Koorooman House assistant nurse unit managers.
Implementing these measures are a work-in-progress. There has been one serious incident of occupational violence and aggression reported to ANMF since the working group was established but overall there has been less violence and aggression at Koorooman House.
ANMF members also feel more clear and confident about reporting violence or aggression, and that changes will occur as a result of reporting to us.
