Shaping the future: Our strategy for research and innovation in humanitarian response.
Shaping the future: Our strategy for research and innovation in humanitarian response.
Principal Investigators: Sonja Merten, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute; Ghislain Bisimwa, Université Catholique de Bukavu; Riyadh Lafta, Mustansiryah University.
Violence against healthcare workers (HCWs) and alarming levels of distrust towards the medical profession is a humanitarian issue with long-term consequences especially in fragile and conflict settings.
This research proposes to evaluate the effectiveness of a de-escalating violence training for HCWs in combination with an organisational level intervention that may further contribute to curb the violence. For this purpose, a community-developed set of rules will be implemented in health facilities and hospitals via a displayed code of conduct. Citizen science and other participatory methods will ensure community engagement and increase community trust in HCWs. The validation of the code of conduct by government and health authorities will ensure that the code of conduct is enforced effectively. Through a stepped-wedge trial this study will generate robust evidence on the effectiveness, cost, and consequences of this combined intervention addressing violence against HCWs in fragile contexts, and on the scalability and applicability to other humanitarian settings.
The study will build on the work of the ICRC Healthcare in Danger initiative. Find out more in their 2020-2022 strategy.
Overall, it is expected that the proposed project will contribute towards reducing the prevalence of violence against HCWs and its severity in contexts of fragility. Further, the project will broaden the understanding of the motivations and underlying cultural and societal factors contributing to violence perpetrated by patients, affiliated third parties or co-workers.
The project will increase public trust in HCWs by empowering communities to co-design solutions and become advocates for a sustainable intervention. It is also expected that this research will contribute to developing a healthier and safer work environment for HCWs, improving their psychophysical well-being and adding to a general improvement in the quality of services.
The approach of this study will enable its integration into professional training and the implementation of hospital policies to reduce violence. This robust research will be essential in identifying the most (cost-) effective way to implement interventions in urban and rural areas of low and middle income countries.
Subscribe to our newsletters....
Subscribe
Please upgrade your browser
You are seeing this because you are using a browser that is not supported. The Elrha website is built using modern technology and standards. We recommend upgrading your browser with one of the following to properly view our website:
Windows MacPlease note that this is not an exhaustive list of browsers. We also do not intend to recommend a particular manufacturer's browser over another's; only to suggest upgrading to a browser version that is compliant with current standards to give you the best and most secure browsing experience.