Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust: VIOLENCE PREVENTION TRAINING FILMS

Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust asked us to help their staff prepare for one of the hardest parts of the job: aggression and violence from the people they care for. They wanted training that staff would recognise from their own working day.

Slides and e-learning can explain a policy, but they can’t show you what a raised voice at a reception desk actually feels like, or how quickly a home visit can turn. With one in seven NHS staff physically attacked by a patient or member of the public last year, the Trust wanted something people would remember when it mattered.

We wrote five scenarios with the Trust’s Freedom to Speak Up Guardian and Risk Services team, built from the situations their staff really face. The scripts were signed off without a single change. We cast professional actors, filmed on location at a Trust site in Reading so every space felt right, and kept the crew small so the performances stayed natural and the scenes felt lived in rather than staged.

After nearly two decades working in broadcast, and with a growing body of drama work behind us, we know how to direct a scene so the tension is real on screen while everyone on set feels safe. That balance is what makes a training film land.

The five films follow staff across the Trust: a nurse on an inpatient ward as a patient’s frustration starts to build, a community nurse alone in a patient’s home, a paediatric nurse supporting a worried parent and her daughter, a receptionist faced with a walk-in patient who won’t be calmed, and an office where the pressure comes from inside the team.

Each film opens with a content warning, so anyone who might be affected can speak to their manager first. The scene then plays out, and the learning points appear one at a time, with space to pause and talk each one through as a team. We delivered branded and non-branded versions of all five, and when the Trust presented them to its violence reduction group, they were really well received.

We make bespoke scenario films built around a trust’s own services and the situations their staff actually face. If you’re reviewing your violence prevention training, we’d love to help.

We’re a PACT-registered production company with broadcast experience across the BBC and ITN, and we’d love to help.