Managing Disruptive Behaviour

Situational Control and Physical Intervention Techniques for Healthcare

In response to current concerns over how NHS Trusts protect their staff from potentially violent situations, a unique training programme has been developed, adapting training originally designed for airline staff handling disruptive passengers.

Our objective is to deliver a programme which can be taught in one day. The delegate will acquire skills in detecting, preventing and eliminating potential incidents of disruptive, unruly or criminal behaviour, and effectively managing such incidents when they do occur. The delegate will develop techniques and principles which can be remembered following limited tuition time and practically applied under pressure.

In one application, this training system resulted in an 80% decrease in attacks on staff.

The programme objectives are:

• To enhance awareness and develop the skills to recognise and categorise a potentially disruptive situation
• To select and apply appropriate intervention techniques to de-escalate the situation
• To effectively apply techniques and principles to ‘situationally control’ disruptive and aggressive individuals
• To achieve competency in control and contain techniques when dealing with aggressive and violent persons
• To achieve competency in the effective use of self defence techniques in a violent or life-threatening situation

“By the end of the session all candidates will be able to recognise and defuse verbally potentially violent encounters and apply physical intervention techniques should the need arise; this will be tested under pressure.” 

The new training programme was recently assessed by an international group of airline training managers. “good techniques demonstrated, with excellent instruction and first class knowledge” commented one delegate.