 It was a very interesting day. It was New Year's Day, January 1st, the beginning of a brand new year. I was sitting in the facility. I work in a drug treatment addiction facility, impatient. And as would be expected, there was very few staffing, because it was a holiday. So it was myself and one other girl. The other person I was working with was about five foot tall. And several clients came running to my office and said, there's an emergency. So I assumed it was a medical emergency, and they said, we got to go to the basement. And when I got to the basement, lo and behold, it was chaos. The tables were overturned, chairs on the floor, people hiding behind the tables. And there was two gentlemen who were pummeling each other. And when he saw me coming, he decided that he needed to exit, so he went past me. And in that moment, I didn't know what to do. So I just put my back up against the wall and let him pass. And then there was another gentleman. He was full of blood. There were three people holding him. And my first thought was, oh my God, this is an infection control nightmare. Like, I don't know if this guy has diseases. I don't know what's going on here. And so in that moment, I said to the gentleman, I don't even know where it came from. It must have been like a blessed moment, because I'm a nurse. And I didn't go to nursing school to learn how to do this. I went to nursing school to learn how to help people get better. So I said to the three people who were holding him, you got to let him go. And I looked at him and I said very quietly, and you need to follow me upstairs. And I can't protect you. And if he comes back, there's nothing I can do to help you. And with that, we proceeded to go upstairs to get to the treatment room. And what happened is they called security and security refused to come. I can't even imagine that they would do that, but they did. So I called them back and I said, there's two girls in this unit with the only staff members and you need to come and they refused to come. To me, that was disastrous, a nightmare. I felt violated. I felt that angry. I remember sitting there that day and typing a letter to my director saying that, you know what, I went to nursing school and I didn't come here to work to be a bouncer. And I really resented the fact that I was being used as a bouncer. And that kind of was the beginning of my evolution into getting more involved in the union and trying to fight for workers' rights. I was appalled that as a nurse I was being used that way or that I was expected to be able to control that kind of violence that was erupting in the building. I guess I would see myself as a high-energy person and I really believe in the ideal that one person can make a difference, that you got to have beliefs and you got to fight for them. And so I wasn't willing to accept just an apology from the security officer. That wasn't good enough. So I joined the statewide labor management team. I ran for office and I put on the first agenda, violence in the workplace. So I proceeded to try to get buy-in from the management side of the table and say, look, we have to do something about this. You guys are putting out information that says the client's more violent. You have nurses and counselors. We're not trained in this and we need to develop a program to address the employee's concerns. And when workplace violence came to us as a labor management agenda item, we were fortunate to have a very collaborative relationship with the union. And we saw it as a situation where it was a win-win. It was a win for labor and it was a win for management to address the potential of workplace violence. Addressing it is difficult because you have to look at a number of different things. You're looking at not just the prevention of workplace violence, but how to deal with it when it happens and even the after-effects of it. And it's not just limited to traditional violence in terms of employee-employee violence or patient-employee violence. We've also extended it to domestic violence, which has a measure of impact on the workplace that's quite significant. So we tried to create a program that addressed all aspects of violence in our workplace, both in our treatment centers and in our ministry of offices. We put together a performance improvement team that was made up of labor and management. And we designed a skeletal curriculum. We locked ourselves away in a room. We looked at all the curriculums that were out there and we put this package together. And then we needed funding because we needed somebody to develop the package out. It was about a 40-page skeletal curriculum. We were fortunate to find a significant labor-management funding resource to us. And that resource allowed us to do some of the things that we wouldn't otherwise have been able to do. And that collaborative relationship between labor and management allowed us to work together to devise a curriculum, identify a vendor, and consultant that could put a program, customize the program to our needs, and deliver that program in a trained-to-trainer environment. We're in the pilot phase. It's being taught right now to employees. And then we're going to roll it out to the whole field. Somehow we've achieved an organizational nirvana because we've blurred all the lines between labor and management because we all realize that this is relevant. If you can't get to work and come home safe in one piece, then that's a critical issue. And I have to say that I feel proud to be a part of the team that was able to do this.