A recent study commissioned by the International Healthcare Security and Safety Foundation (IHSS) found that there was a 41 percent lower risk of physical assaults in hospitals where Tasers were available to security personnel, according to an article on the Security InfoWatch website.

The study conducted by the researchers at Duke University Medical Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, looked at weapon use among hospital security personnel to assess how the weapons were used during violent events.

“One of the stats that came out of the survey was that 98 percent of the hospitals offered workplace violence training or education to their security staff and it went down after that in terms of the different workgroups that might be involved in that training. So, it was surprising that not everyone in the hospital was participating in workplace violence de-escalation training because it is such a prevalent thing that everybody should have,” said Steve Nibbelink, president of the IHSS Foundation.

However, the lack of workplace violence training for other workers was not due to disinterest. The most common recommendation from survey participants for improving hospital security and workplace violence prevention was training (63 percent).

Read the article.