University of Michigan Health, Sparrow in Lansing and U-M Health West near Grand Rapids, are collaborating with Lawrence Technological University in Southfield to research methods to prevent violence in the workplace.
The goal is to share what they learn about violence prevention to hospitals around Michigan.
U-M Sparrow president Denny Martin says he’s looking forward to working with his team on this project.
“I think we'll use all the great academic minds at Lawrence Tech University to come and collect a lot of data through a lot of interviews, looking at the number of incidents that we have here, within our hospitals and West the type of incidents. They're not all the same. Some are just very verbal. Some are physical in nature. Some involve a weapon or not. So, to really collect a lot of data to understand what type of violent events occur in the workplace.”
Martin says it’s important to make the workplace safe for all employees.
“We need to do everything that we can as an industry to make their place of work safe and to not deter future young students that may be in high school thinking that they want to pursue a career in healthcare, or those already involved in a degree program in college that want to come work in a hospital.”
The research partners will hold their first board meeting on October 28.