A workplace violence educational program: a repeated measures study

Violence against healthcare employees is a profound problem in the emergency department worldwide. One strategy to reduce the risk of violence is prevention focused education. The purpose of this paper was to report the learning outcomes of a workplace violence educational prevention program tailored to the needs of emergency department employees. A quasi-experimental design was used to determine the knowledge retention of program content following a hybrid (online and classroom) educational intervention. One hundred twenty emergency department employees that completed the workplace violence prevention program participated in the study. A repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted to determine if individual test scores increased significantly between baseline, posttest, and six month posttest periods. The results indicated a significant time effect, Wilk's Λ = .390, F (2, 118) = 26.554, p < .001, η2 = .310. Follow-up polynomial contrasts indicated a significant linear effect with means increasing over time, F (1, 119) = 53.454, p < .001, η2 = .310, while individual test scores became significantly higher over time. It was concluded that the use of a hybrid modality increases the probability that significant learning outcomes and retention will be achieved.