Background
In the rapidly growing home health and hospice industry, little is known about workplace violence prevention (WVP) training and violent events.
Methods
We examined the characteristics of WVP training and estimated violent event rates among 191 home health and hospice care providers from six agencies in California. Training characteristics were identified from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines. Rates were estimated as the number of violent events divided by the total number of home visit hours.
Results
Between 2008 and 2009, 66.5% (n = 127) of providers reported receiving WVP training when newly hired or as recurrent training. On average, providers rated the quality of their training as 5.7 (1 = poor to 10 = excellent). Among all providers, there was an overall rate of 17.1 violent events per 1,000 visit‐hours.
Conclusion
Efforts to increase the number of home health care workers who receive WVP training and to improve training quality are needed. Am. J. Ind. Med. 59:23–30, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.