Managing the Risk of Workplace Violence to Healthcare and Community Service Providers
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Appendix 3: Summary of Causative Factors
Figure 1, which is derived from Reason’s work on accident causation, shows a general model of potential organisational defences, adapted for client/patient violence. The model illustrates that actions at both higher organisational and individual levels are needed to prevent violence. (Note: the diagram (a) may be misleading for the reasons noted below and (b) does not mention processes that should occur after an assault or that relate to wider societal issues.)
Figure 1: Model of Potential Organisational Defences
Note: The structure of this diagram casts a false inevitability over the situation - in that a straight line is used to describe the trajectory of an event (that results in an assault). Of course, many ‘windows of opportunity’ exist in each of the 5 panes, through which many different straight and curved arrows could pass.
The straight line therefore represents only one of many possible ways in which things could chain together to result in an assault.
This point may seem academic. However, when an assault has occurred people who look for a chain of causation may find a straight line and view it, with the ‘benefit’ of hindsight (and therefore probably falsely), as either inevitable or the only possible one that could represent the series of events.
And, again of course, there is no reason why one straight line should be used to represent the series of events - which could be likened to a web as much as a chain.