St. Cloud Hospital Among Most Who Train for Workplace Violence

ST. CLOUD -- St. Cloud Hospital is among most hospitals which provide training to avoid violence in the workplace.

Despite recent news stories about violence in emergency rooms and against medical personnel, it's nothing new to St. Cloud Hospital. Joy Plamann is the hospital's Care Center Director for Medicine. She says they have been providing their staff training since 2010.

Plamann says they focus a lot on trying to be proactive by teaching staff about some subtleties patient's might exhibit which could lead to violent behavior like staring or pacing.  Additional steps are taught on how to intervene and how to escape a violent offender who is trying to hold a staff member against their will.

We told you recently about a man who damaged equipment and assaulted a staff member at St. Cloud hospital last weekend. Also, a twin cities doctor was killed in his Orono home by a man who was said to be upset over his mother's care.

Plamann says in addition to the training, they have drills to practice situations where there may be an active threat happening.