Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Project – Full Written

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Committee Chair

Charlotte H. Stephens

Abstract

Individuals working at homeless shelters have the daunting task of managing violent/aggressive behaviors with the population they serve. This project focused on educating homeless shelter staff on the use of therapeutic communication to decrease the escalation of aggression and violence when caring for their guests. The DNP Project Leader taught 23 homeless shelter staff members, and the project included three 2-hour educational sessions. The first class focused on understanding what regions in the brain are responsible for aggressive, violent, and emotional behaviors; the second class focused on what the literature says about aggressive behavior in homelessness; and the last class focused on best practice approaches to de-escalate and mitigate aggressive behavior through therapeutic communication. The DNP project sought to provide understanding and improve learning in homeless shelter workers of the use of therapeutic communication and its impact on decreasing violent/aggressive behaviors, which in turn increases staff safety. The in-person classes were held over 3 months (one class per month every second Wednesday). The DNP Project Leader provided each participant with a folder that enclosed a printed copy of each lesson to follow along during the session. Additionally, to increase learning, each session included time for participants to ask questions to clarify information. Participants engaged in a pre-test/post-test to evaluate if their understanding of the use of therapeutic communication to de-escalate violent/aggressive behavior had improved after all three sessions were complete. As revealed by the pre-test/post-test, a descriptive analysis showed a 68% increase in the class test scores after the three educational sessions. Participants showed an increased understanding of the brain's involvement in aggressive/violent behavior and the role of neurotransmitters in regulating emotions/behaviors such as fear, depression, joy, and relaxation. Also, participants' comprehension improved in terms of therapeutic communication's effectiveness in addressing aggressive behavior and the best practices for managing situational behaviors such as anxiousness, defensiveness, aggressiveness, and sadness.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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