Encountering staff-directed aggression within mental health and substance abuse services: exploring conceptions of practice following education

Table 1 Outcome space of participant conceptions of practice in staff prevention and management of staff-directed aggression and violence

Descriptive categories	Referential aspect	Structural aspect
1. Observation, reporting and expectation of organizational intervention	Safe-guarding the boundaries of services and maintaining staff safety	Focus on organizational responsibility
2. Application of personalized de-escalating skills and behaviour	Finding practical and applicable solutions without access to a fixed set of methods and strategies	Focus on staff’s idiosyncratic abilities, prerequisites and techniques
3. Delivery of team-based and standardized services	Seeing the need for systematic problem-solving in the handling and management of risk	Focus on cooperation and support between experienced and skilled colleagues
4. Provision of perceptive and responsive services	Recognizing service users as sources of valuable information in making sound professional judgements	Focus on communication with service users and abilities for employing informed service-provision by staff
5. Facilitation of sensitive, involving and reflexive care	Professional practice as attentive of human complexity and valuing interpersonal relations	Focus on service users and staff as persons, and reciprocal connectivity

ISSN: 1752-4458