Advocacy Through Legislation: Workplace Violence

Advocacy Through Legislation
Identify a problem or concern in your state, community, or organization that has the capacity to be advocated through legislation. Research the issue and complete the sections below. For each topic that requires the listing of criteria, a minimum of two criteria should be identified and discussed. Add more rows as is appropriate for the topic/proposal.
Problem
In no more than 250 words, describe the problem, who is affected, and the current ramifications. Explain the consequences if the issue continues.

Workplace violence against healthcare workers deployed within emergency departments is a significant problem to nurses’ health and workplace safety in my organization. Emergency departments constitute an increasingly high-risk context for workplace violence compared to other medical care settings. Nurses in my community face many chronic and acute, often unexpected, stressors routinely, including trauma, hospital overcrowding, and sudden death, and frequently handle patients with great potential for violent behavioral tendencies due to their illness state, alcohol or drug intoxication, or long waits (d’Ettorre et al., 2018). Violence against healthcare workers affects nurses, other healthcare workers, as well as employers. In addition, violence has ramifications at personal, organizational, and societal levels. At an individual level, violence at the workplace significantly affects nurses’ well-being and health. It can lead to injuries and death, including increasing the risk for post-traumatic stress injury for nurses. For organizations, the nurse staff could have concerns over their well-being and health, which constitutes a great imperative since violent incidents lead to lost productivity and increased costs. Violence against nurses leads to deteriorated patient care at a community level and increased questions concerning society’s norms and values. If the issue continues, it could have significant ramifications on the individual victims, organizations, and the community, whether via economic costs, deteriorating societal trust, or normalization of unacceptable behavior (Spelten et al., 2020).

Idea for Addressing Solution
In no more than 250 words, outline your idea for addressing the issue and explain why legislation is the best course for advocacy.

Violence against nurses can be addressed through Workplace Violence Prevention Program. This program employs a hybrid learning model, with online as well as classroom activities; however, it emerged from a collaboration between emergency services and an institution of higher learning. It considers the needs of nurses and services; therefore, the research-action technique was adopted for its creation: planning, execution, and assessment (Pereira et al., 2019). Workplace violence prevention programs work the same way as “the zero-tolerance” strategy addresses violence against violence and its perpetrators. They are both inclined to manage violent incidents instead of mitigating or preventing them (Spelten et al., 2020). In that vein, legislation is the best advocacy course for a particular rationale. The legislation would address the violence as an epidemic and take preventive measures rather t...