Can Crisis Prevention Training Prepare Nursing Students for the Job?

We’re excited to announce that Sprott Shaw College is adding Nonviolent Crisis Intervention^® training to its Practical Nursing, Health Care Assistant, and Community Support Worker – Social Services curriculums.

This is great news for healthcare and human services students, giving them a leg up on learning how to handle escalating behaviors—before they enter their fields.

Many professionals across all vocations—including nurses, social workers, and teachers—choose their fields in order to help people and make the world a better place. They go to school to learn the skills of their trade, and then they find themselves faced with huge challenges once they try to help people who verbally or physically act out due to stress, trauma, pain, or any number of factors.

That’s where Nonviolent Crisis Intervention^® training comes in. CPI training focuses on empathy and prevention, equipping working staff members and professionals-in-training with strategies for defusing anxious, hostile, or violent behavior at the earliest possible stage. The program helps students and professionals organize their thinking about how behavior escalates, and gives them effective techniques for responding safely and appropriately during moments of chaos.

“I wish I would have had this ten years ago!” is what training participants who have been in their professions for years say about the Nonviolent Crisis Intervention^® program. CPI Certified Instructors who teach the program to their coworkers tell us that with training, things change dramatically for staff who have always struggled with how best to prevent and deal with behaviors and assaults. Once they get the training, they get a framework that brings clarity to how they think about behaviors, and how they handle behaviors. They learn which intervention to use with which type of behavior, and they deepen the compassion that brought them to their professions in the first place.

So what do students think about getting Nonviolent Crisis Intervention^® training while in school? CPI Certified Instructor Celeste Waddy-Carlton, RN, MSN Ed., wanted to find out, so she led a research project to test the effectiveness of Nonviolent Crisis Intervention^® training for nursing students enrolled in a New York City College of Technology course called Caring for Clients With Complex Alterations in Integrative Needs. Of 108 students who participated in Waddy-Carlton's study:

• 92% said they learned to use nonverbal techniques to prevent acting-out behavior.

• 93% said they learned how to use verbal de-escalation strategies such as limit setting.

• 94% said they learned safe physical intervention procedures to use as a last resort when a person presents a danger to self or others.

• 96% said they learned how to re-establish Therapeutic Rapport with acting-out individuals after a crisis is over.

• 95% said the program content was relevant to their needs.

Want a couple tips from CPI training? Check out these techniques.

Watch this video to find out what’s at the core of CPI training.