On November 19, 2018, a Chicago police officer was killed in the line of duty as he was responding to a gunfire attack on Mercy Hospital. Unfortunately, in addition to the heroic officer, a doctor and a pharmacy resident were also shot and killed in that incident. The hospital was a crime scene akin to a warzone for several hours that Monday afternoon, until the news started coming out that the gunman knew the doctor who was murdered that day.
Some of us may remember January 20, 2015, when a man walked into Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, asking to speak with Dr. Michael J. Davidson, and fired two shots, killing the doctor. The shooter’s mother was a recent patient at the Boston area hospital and allegedly “had some issue” with the prior medical treatment of his mother at the hospital.
While hospital shootings are rare, they are always serious. According to a 2012 study of news reports by the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, there were 154 shootings from 2000 through 2011, with 235 injured or dead. The most common victim was the shooter, 45 percent, with physicians and nurses rarely victims, the study found.
Rare as the active shooter incident may be, there are various other violent acts that healthcare workers experience as part of their routine jobs. In 2016, healthcare and social service workers suffered 69 percent of all workplace violence injuries, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and were nearly five times more likely to experience violence on the job than the average US worker. They are more likely to get injured at work than even police officers and prison guards.
House Democrats seem to be using their newly regained power on the Hill to protect healthcare workers from such violence they experience as part of their jobs. Representative Joe Courtney introduced the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act, which would require hospitals, nursing homes, rehab centers, mental health providers, and jails to develop workplace safety plans to protect their workers from violence they experience at the hands of patients. The bill would also require employers to record and investigate all complaints of violence, and prohibits retaliation against employees who call 911.
The bill would essentially cement current guidelines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) at the Department of Labor into law.
“We expect health care and social service employees to care for us in our times of need, but we know that each year, these men and women are faced with rising rates of violence, often from patients and their families,” said Representative Courtney. “This legislation compels OSHA to do what employees, safety experts, and Members of Congress have been calling for years – create an enforceable standard to ensure that employers are taking these risks seriously, and creating safe workplaces that their employees deserve.”