What can we do about workplace harassment and violence?

AHS’ Respectful Workplaces and Prevention of Harassment and Violence policy and its associated procedures guide us in how to prevent, identify, report and mitigate all types of workplace harassment and violence — external party, worker-to-worker, patient-to-worker, and domestic / personal violence in the workplace.

All AHS workers are encouraged to know how to appropriately respond to an incident of harassment or violence by taking the training that is appropriate to your role. Medical staff can review this resource for more information on harassment training. 

Preventing harassment and violence

We can often prevent harassment and violence. Our AHS values, our core competencies, and patient-and-family centred care and trauma informed care practices help us do so.

The Workplace Violence and Prevention and Respectful Workplaces Insite pages offer more information about how to prevent workplace harassment and violence.

Responding to harassment and violence

AHS supports workers to actively address and attempt to resolve conflicts that may affect them in the workplace – and take action to protect themselves.

Responding to harassment and violence includes:

• verbal or physical de-escalation by individuals or teams
• implementing emergency response protocols like calling protective services or law enforcement for assistance early on
• applying a Patient Violence/Aggression Alert and adapting the individualized care plan for a patient/worker
• debriefing with those involved
• providing post-incident support to employees

Workers are expected to report all incidents of workplace harassment and violence through MySafetyNet on Insite.

Workers may refuse to perform dangerous work using the Dangerous Work Refusal Process found on Insite. Search keyword Dangerous Work Refusal Process to access this page on Insite.

AHS workers can also visit Workplace Violence Prevention on Insite for more information.