On Oct. 24, the provincial government announced a plan to expand the number of protection services officers, funding 320 new positions at 26 health-care sites in an effort to address the increase in violence towards front line staff.
The move follows mounting pressure from unions to address issues of workplace safety.
The announcement promised that protection officers will be trained in trauma-informed care and practice within a relational security model. While buzz-worthy, these terms ring empty.
A protection services officer is code for a security guard, someone who may not have any background in health care — let alone any engagement with what it means to be trauma-informed.
As for the relational security model, this is a model that has at least anecdotally demonstrated efficacy in reducing occurrences of aggression in care settings.
However, one requires near fantastical mental gymnastic ability to imagine exactly how security guards will build meaningful, trust-based relationships over time with patients who are expected to be discharged as soon as possible from our overflowing facilities.
Working conditions set the stage for violent incidents to arise. Chronic understaffing and high nurse-to-patient ratios have consequences — particularly in high acuity settings requiring immediate and appropriate response by care staff.
These conditions result in a cascade of events, placing front-line staff at risk. Staff are forced to take on heavier patient assignments with less time for responding to patient-specific needs. Working short-staffed can delay patient care, a situation ripe for escalation. Hiring protection officers will not alleviate these conditions, nor will they address patient-specific factors that contribute to harassment and violence.
Furthermore, most health-care facilities already have existing contracts with private security companies, clinical support attendants and violence prevention specialists. Despite this existing program, front-line workers continue to experience workplace violence including being hit, punched, spat on, and sexually harassed.
Intervention by security personnel once a crisis has already developed can have harmful consequences. Surveillance and security also disproportionately target Black and Indigenous people, people of colour, low-income people, and people who use drugs.
Our government has produced no evidence to demonstrate that the current model is effective or addresses the root causes of violence — how will expanding security measures by hiring protection officers end the violence that we face at work?
The short-sighted plan from the NDP government promises a significant amount of funding. This announcement comes at a time when health-care worker burnout is at an all-time high, when front-line workers are working short-staffed so frequently that rural emergency rooms have been forced to close, and all in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic.
Hiring 320 protection workers when the province should be supporting the training, recruitment, and retention of front-line health-care workers is a wanton misuse of public resources.
Relational safety as a model does offer hope for a solution. We have seen this model implemented well in community-based health-care settings, most successfully when the provider is a peer with shared lived experience with patients and when they have been provided with the time to build meaningful relationships.
Relationship building must be the priority, and not an add-on to this kind of work.
Hiring more protection officers reflects the government’s perspective that surveillance, policing and punishment can resolve the many social crises that contribute to the violence health-care workers face, which does not reflect research findings.
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