Workplace violence is a daily reality in healthcare.
Hospitals and other healthcare settings are centers for healing, but inside those walls, the people charged with caring for the sick are often victims of violence themselves — at the hands of patients or their families and friends. Staff in frontline healthcare jobs are five times more likely to be assaulted at work than the rest of the labor force.
Here are five things you need to know about workplace violence in healthcare:
In healthcare facilities, workplace violence takes many forms, including verbal abuse, physical threats, or actual physical assault by patients or their families. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, approximately 69 percent of nearly 25,000 workplace assaults reported each year occur in healthcare and social service settings.
The perception of many people (workers and supervisors alike) is that violence is part of the job. Studies show that the level of violence in hospitals persists because of the hospital leadership’s tolerance for violence.
People fail to realize the gravity and frequency of incidents because healthcare workers underreport violent encounters with patients. Nurses and other caregivers tend to tolerate a certain amount of workplace threats or violence, attributing it to physical or behavioral issue that the patient cannot control.
The risk of violence in the workplace increases at healthcare facilities that don’t have policies and training for recognizing and managing hostile behaviors from patients, clients, visitors and co-workers. Understaffing and inadequate security also put workers at risk.
Right now, there is no federal standard that requires protections against workplace violence, so the AFT and our partners are fighting for legislation aimed at prevention.
Workplace violence is a pervasive issue in American healthcare, but prevention is possible. AFT Nurses and Health Professionals is fighting the perception that violence is just part of the job. Some hospitals have to be forced to do the right thing by their workers, whether it’s hiring more security officers, buying technology to monitor hospital occupants or creating programs to identify ways to stop violence before it happens. That’s why we’re championing the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act (H.R. 1309), which will change this once and for all.
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