National Nurses United Press Release: Nurses Urge Council to Pass Legislation

Washington, D.C. -- Registered nurses today urged the District of Columbia Council’s Committee on Health and Human Services to promptly pass legislation to ensure that hospitals create plans and take necessary action to protect patients, health care workers, and others from violence in hospitals.

“A nurse colleague and I were attacked by two family members of a patient on an evening in late 2012,” Elaine Sherman, a registered nurse at the DC VA Medical Center and a member of National Nurses United, told the committee.

Hannah Roy, an NNU registered nurse at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, testified that, according to Occupational Safety and Health Administration records, between 2012 and 2014, staff members at her hospital were victims of violence on the job “an average of twenty-three times per year—in other words, at a rate of almost twice a month. This is unacceptable.”

An analysis of OSHA data indicates that across the US, between 2012 and 2014, the rate of injuries from workplace violence increased for all hospital job classifications by 50 percent and almost doubled for nurses and nursing assistants. According to Scientific American, “Health-care workers experience the most nonfatal workplace violence compared to other professions by a wide margin, with attacks on them accounting for almost 70 percent of all nonfatal workplace assaults causing days away from work in the U.S., according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.” Research also has shown that 13 percent of registered nurses across the country experience physical violence per year.

Read more at: http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/nurses-urge-council-to-pass-legislation-to-ensure-hospital-safety/