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| Code White: Stories of workplace violence |
| Public attention |
| Legislative solution |
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Page 2 of 3
Public attention
In recent years, labour organizations have been trying to draw public attention to the issue of workplace violence in hopes of compelling employers and government to take more action in addressing the problem.
More recently, OPSEU created bus shelter ads that depict the aggression faced by workers, particularly at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. The ads were taken down days after they were posted, however, following complaints from various groups that the ad further stigmatizes people with mental health problems. The controversial ad showed an image of a woman with a black eye and a statement about CAMH’s legal obligation to keep its staff safe.
“The Client Empowerment Council at CAMH sent us a letter saying that we were vile, despicable, hate-mongers, and that we should remove a poster that brings attention to the fact that patients are violent. And we did. We took it down,” says Nancy Pridham a member of the OPSEU executive board and union president at CAMH.
Pridham explains the ad was not meant to disgrace mental health patients but to try to highlight the issues of violence against staff. “This is actually about us. This is about the staff.”
OPSEU and the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) held a joint press conference in November last year to urge CAMH to “make a serious commitment” to the issue of violence against staff.
“When you have your jaw broken in several places, when you have your shoulder broken, when you’re sexually assaulted in the workplace, those are problems. Those things need to be addressed. They need to be addressed with a comprehensive program. Staff need to be provided with training, and so far we have yet to see that,” says Pridham, who is a registered practical nurse.
Last September alone, 23 incidents of violence against workers reportedly took place at CAMH. According to reports, one of those incidents involved a nurse who was dragged and sexually assaulted in the washroom by a patient. The nurse had no panic button or personal alarm to call for help, and only managed to get away when another patient heard her screams and startled the attacker, according to reports.
CAMH staffers need to be equipped with personal alarms, says Pridham, citing a provision under the collective bargaining agreement that states CAMH “will provide employees who are required to work alone in the field with an appropriate and effective communication device for summoning assistance.”
CAMH recently implemented the use of personal alarms for staff in a particular floor where a sexual assault happened. But Pridham insists all workers, not just those working in certain programs, should be provided with personal alarms. She adds it should be part of a comprehensive workplace violence risk assessment which, according to Pridham, CAMH is yet to implement.
In January 2008, CAMH issued its Workplace Violence Prevention Program, its first written policy pertaining to workplace violence prevention since establishing a workplace violence committee with the union in January 2007, says Eric Preston, CAMH vice-president of human resources and organizational development.
“CAMH is of the view that employee safety and patient safety go hand-in-hand. That you can’t achieve one without the other,” Preston says. “So that approach that we take is very inclusive…to make sure that we address all of the needs.”
Preston acknowledges that while the unions would be of the same view that employee and patient safety are equally important, the employees’ concern may be about the pace at which the issue is being addressed.
“Their concern is probably that we’re not going fast enough and far enough. And I think there maybe some substance in that. We can always do more, so that’s what we’re trying to do and we’re trying to be responsive to their needs as well, to try to make sure that they think that we’re addressing them appropriately,” Preston says.
The CAMH executive says staff training is one way of addressing the problem. CAMH employees are trained on a course called Prevention and Management of Aggressive Behaviour and on CAMH’s new Workplace Violence Prevention Program. Employees also undergo continuing training on Code Whites, a response code for situations where an individual becomes violent, threatening patient and staff safety.
Preston says a comprehensive risk assessment across the organization is also in the pipeline. Some risk assessments have been done in the past, but were only limited to certain departments or programs within CAMH, he adds.
“What we’re looking into now is a more comprehensive approach that we will probably be implementing in the very, very near future to make sure that we have done all the risk assessments in the workplace violence prevention policy that we issued at the beginning of (2008). Included in that is a requirement that these risk assessments be done all the time,” Preston says.
Last November, the Ministry of Labour laid nine charges against CAMH for violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act resulting from two incidents of violence in November 2007. Details of those incidents have not been revealed.
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