Designing a novel post-incident intervention to address patient harassment of staff in VA primary care settings

NIH RePORTER · VA · I21 · · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

Project Background: Ninety-seven percent of women and 77% of men internal medicine physicians in a recent Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare facility survey reported sexual harassment from patients. Staff may cope with patient-perpetrated harassment by omitting elements of care, rushing clinical tasks, and distancing from the patient emotionally and physically. Further, patient-perpetrated harassment is associated with decreased staff well-being and increased burnout and turnover, which are in turn associated with decreased quality of care, decreased patient satisfaction, and increased risk of medical errors. Secretary McDonough recently vowed to end all forms of harassment and discrimination at VA, and the new Deborah Sampson Act requires facilities to implement anti-harassment procedures. However, prior work indicates that VA lacks systematic, evidence-based interventions for responding to patient harassment of staff that anticipate harassment, stop the incident, communicate that harassment is unwelcome, facilitate incident reporting, and support affected staff. The goal of this pilot project is to design a novel intervention to guide immediate post- incident staff, clinic, and facility responses to patient-perpetrated sexual harassment of staff in primary care. Significance/Impact: The resulting intervention will address ORD Strategic Priority 4: actively promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion by communicating that VA does not tolerate harassment based on social identity characteristics. Additionally, it will contribute to HSR&D priority domain: Primary Care Practice and Complex Chronic Disease Management by offering support related to patient-perpetrated harassment that can “improve provider and staff morale,” improve staff-provider interactions, and increase quality of patient care. Innovation: This pilot project leverages a unique opportunity to respond to unprecedented leadership and policy support for interventions to address harassment at VA. The resulting intervention will fill a critical gap in procedures grounded in empirical data for responding to patient-perpetrated harassment and supporting VA staff, and will complement VA’s ongoing anti-harassment efforts. Our design process will be guided by an innovative framework that will ensure that the intervention fits with VA priorities and stakeholder needs. Specific Aims: The Specific Aims are to: 1) identify intervention components based on existing and ideal practices for responding to patient-perpetrated harassment of staff; and 2) refine the post-incident intervention through iterative stakeholder feedback. Methodology: Guided by a Steering Committee of operations partners, VA leadership, and subject matter experts, we will follow a step-based process of transcreation, i.e., co-designing interventions with stakeholders to fit with local contexts from the outset. We will focus on primary care settings, which have established rates of harassment and serve as the main port of entry in...

Key facts

NIH application ID
10420831
Project number
1I21HX003523-01
Recipient
VA GREATER LOS ANGELES HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
Principal Investigator
Karissa Fenwick
Activity code
I21
Funding institute
VA
Fiscal year
2023
Award amount
Award type
1
Project period
2023-01-01 → 2024-09-30