Translational models of workplace violence in healthcare : interprofessional application

Even those who work or do research in their profession's version of the WPV field struggle to understand the numerous issues and may not have a consensus on the use of terms and concepts. Imagine the difficulties when crossing professional and discipline communication lines on such complex matters. Yet, dealing with active WPV, and finding solutions to reduce future WPV, routinely requires interprofessional and interdisciplinary collaboration. WPV, such as threats, assaults and homicide (mega-violence), may be low in number when considering a typical workday's events, but they have high impact on individuals and the healthcare system when they occur. Lower level violence (micro-violence), such as workplace incivility (WPI), unreasonable expectations, offensive actions or words, or the lack of action or words are much more frequent than megaviolence. Micro-violence needs to be better understood as possible antecedents of mega violence. As such, reduction of micro-violence may present a needed opportunity to reduce mega-violence.