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My evidence-based practice project is to improve workplace violence by increasing awareness, responding to incidents and improving policies in place. With these new measures in place, the Emergency Department will be a safe place to work. To make my project successful, variables play an important part in improving the process and how to evaluate it.
I will need to determine the independent and dependent variables to improve the safety of the Emergency Department. Workplace violence on the Emergency Department staff is the dependent variable and the independent variable is the number of workplace violence incidents they encounter. I would evaluate independent variables by collecting data from workplace incidents that had occurred in the last year and interview ED staff to collect data from as many members as possible about workplace incidents.
The dependent variable is workplace violence (verbal, physical and emotional abuse) on Emergency Department on staff. Studies show that the Emergency Department has higher statistics of violence because of independent variables like stress, long wait times, unpredictable and challenging situations.
If a process or improved policy is made, it can help improve other departments of hospitals and clinics where WPV occurs. Other dependent variables can include workplace violence in different departments on different staff members that are a part of psychiatric facilities, floors amongst the hospitals and outpatient clinics. When the evaluation of current policies and responses to “Code Greys” are reviewed and analyzed, we can implement changes depending on the variables that are collected.