Health care workers need protection from violence
It is a sad fact of life that many places once considered safe havens are now marred by acts of violence once reserved for the streets. Shopping malls, college and university campuses, public schools and buildings, movie theaters and other locations once considered off-limits surface regularly in the news as sites of violent criminal acts that often include random victims.
Even hospitals and other health care facilities are being affected. As riveting testimony in Harrisburg before the House Health Committee revealed recently, health care workers — and particularly nurses — are becoming frequent victims of assault and violence. Emergency room and psychiatric unit workers in particular are finding themselves attacked by patients and visitors, often for no apparent reason.
In the case of a Philadelphia nurse who offered testimony, this meant being knocked unconscious from behind in a vicious pummeling. In the publicized case of two nurses at Uniontown Hospital in May, it meant one received a concussion and broken nose, the other suffered multiple facial injuries — and a patient who came to their aid was attacked as well.
I am convinced that we must do something to help ensure these workers’ safety. That’s why I have decided to cosponsor House Bill 1992, put forth by state Rep. Nicholas Micozzie, a Republican from Delaware County, known as the Health Care Facilities Workplace Violence Prevention Act. This is not a Democrat issue or a Republican issue; it is a workplace safety issue in one of the most vulnerable settings you can imagine — and it has my full support.
The objective of this legislation is simple: It would require health care facilities to create an internal violence prevention committee, comprised of management and workers, to devise strategies that keep workplace violence from occurring. Jointly, this committee would assess risk, develop and maintain a detailed violence prevention plan, provide employee training, and develop an in-house crisis-response team. At least half of the committee members would have direct patient-care responsibilities, and the majority of them would be licensed nurses.
The bill also prohibits retaliatory measures against employees who report workplace violence, and provides for state Department of Labor and Industry oversight. These are two important components, which protect employees and give the proposed law teeth to ensure compliance.
No one should be naïve enough to believe that we can totally prevent incidents of violence in health care facilities. The high-stress, high-traffic nature of an emergency room, for example, where drugs and alcohol can play a role in patient and visitor behavior, virtually guarantees that thorny and unpredictable situations will arise.
But what we can do is have the voice of people who work at the facility, in front-line positions of patient care, added to the mix in developing strategies to minimize the risk to their own physical well-being. Their job is tough enough without having to be worried about getting punched out.
I know how some folks twist things to suit their own agenda, so in parting let me be clear: My support for this bill should not be construed as an indictment that health care facilities are not concerned about employee safety, or that they are not doing enough to protect their workers.
Rather, it is an embrace of a good idea with the potential to make our health care settings even safer. No one can argue with the worthiness of that goal.
State Rep. Timothy S. Mahoney, D-South Union, represents the 51st Legislative District.