Part
2: Breaking down barriers to safety at OMH
This is the second in a three-part series about the
persistently high level of violence and injuries at state mental health
facilities and how managers and staff are working together to stop it. In May,
we highlighted the scope of the problem. This month, the focus shifts to the
difficult struggle to open the system and the minds of the people involved to
trust one another, assess the problem honestly and try fresh and creative
approaches. Next month, the series will highlight specific insights and ideas
for reducing the violence.
By SHERRY HALBROOK
There’s an old joke that asks, “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a
light bulb?” The answer: “Just one, but the light bulb must really want to
change.”
For years, employees and patients at New York’s state psychiatric centers have
been asking a similar, but deadly serious question: How many broken bones,
battered bodies, traumatized psyches and ruined careers does it take before the
state mental health system will really want to change?
At last, the collective will appears to be building within the system to
identify and accept the fundamental changes required to make it a safe and
therapeutic environment for the thousands of patients and employees involved.
At a jointly sponsored 2007 Safe and Therapeutic Environment Leadership
Symposium in March, managers and staff of the state Office of Mental Health (OMH)
shared their observations about what causes the violence and how to adapt and
use those insights at each worksite.
Changing the system
For more than a decade, labor and management have been working together to open
minds and change attitudes at OMH to allow for new approaches to reducing the
level of violence.
“Our policies are not carved in stone,” said Dan O’Dell, assistant director for
policy, regulation and legislation at OMH. “They are carved in a far harder
substance — bureaucracy.”
The linchpins of the foundation for change that they’ve created are:
• An agencywide and worksite-level joint health and safety committee structure
that includes management, PEF, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)
and NYS Corrections Officers and Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA) is
gradually fostering mutual trust and overcoming turf and control issues;
• An agencywide Safe and Therapeutic Environment Policy (STEP) established in
1998 that extends to every OMH worksite; and
• A unique computerized system (Occupational Injury Reporting System) for
gathering and analyzing very detailed information about accidents and injuries
throughout OMH.
Changing attitudes, distrust
“In the beginning, a lot of time was spent getting management’s commitment to
this (STEP),” said Victor Vignola of the OMH Bureau of Employee Relations, “but
it was time well spent....The key to success was staff involvement and
management commitment.”
Rosemary Spriggs, the deputy director for administrative programs at Mohawk
Valley Psychiatric Center, said she initially felt offended when union reps told
her the staff did not feel safe.
“But I decided it was important to respect what they were saying,” Spriggs
added.
“Once we began talking with her, we realized employees were not aware of what
management was doing to make us safer,” said PEF Division 183 Leader Jo Cecelia
Moore. “Now, we have the information online and every staff person has access to
it.”
Moore also cited the value of forming a special task force at Mohawk Valley
where everyone is “on an equal basis and there is no fear of retribution for
criticisms. We invited all staff to participate and that brought out a multitude
of issues to work on.”
“It took repeated assurances to staff that there would be no retaliation,”
Spriggs said. “A PEF member was the facilitator at the first task force meeting.
It was hard to give up (management) control, but we are very glad we did because
we got good results.”
“In 1995, we wouldn’t have dreamed of telling new employees that bad things can
happen to good people at work,” said Susan O’Brien, affirmative action
administrator for Mid-Hudson PC.
“Now,” O’Brien said, “at new-employee orientation, we tell them we have a trauma
response team that has helped a lot of people....We’ve realized that we have to
be pro-active.”
The Communicator June 2007
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