QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER | WINTER 2023 – #43
Increasing Levels of Workplace Violence Pose Multiple Threats to Providers By Joy Stephenson-Laws, Managing Partner There is extensive media coverage of the various epidemics and other public health crises that providers valiantly face daily. However, there is one epidemic that is mostly hidden from public view that can directly impact both community and provider health. This epidemic is the rampant and increasing level of violence against healthcare workers themselves – often by the very people they are trying to help. It is true that violence – verbal, emotional, physi cal, and more recently on social media – can, and does, happen in virtually any workplace. But research suggests that 75 percent – yes, 75 percent – of all workplace violence happens to healthcare workers. This means that healthcare workers are five times more likely to experience workplace violence than their counterparts in other
industries. In fact, in April of 2022 alone, 92 percent of healthcare workers experienced workplace violence. They also miss work because of violent incidents more often than workers in other industries. This violence is not limited to one area of a provider’s operations nor to any specific group of workers. No one nor area is immune. To give an idea of how serious this epidemic has become: ore than 80 percent of ED doctors believe M violence in this area of the hospital is increasing, with almost half saying it has greatly increased over the past several years. In fact, almost twothirds of ED doctors report having been assaulted over the past year. A ccording to one study, two nurses are attacked in the U.S. every hour. The highest number of
assaults take place in EDs, psychiatric units, surgical units, and rehab. Hospital nurses are the staff most likely to suffer physical or verbal violence. A t one provider, a patient who was angry about still being in pain after an operation literally walked into the provider’s facilities and shot the surgeon, another doctor, a visitor, and a receptionist. In another, a nurse was thrown against a wall and bitten by a patient. In addition to the physical risks, which cannot be minimized, this workplace violence creates a cascading negative impact on all aspects of a provider’s operations and staff: orrying about, or emotionally recovering W from, violence distracts staff from providing the best possible care. It also can impact patient willingness to get care evidenced by data that