Celebrated Healthcare Heroes are Workplace Violence Victims

The impact of violence on nurses is serious. Violence prevents nurses, doctors and other professionals from providing uninterrupted, quality patient care. Encountering violence at work can result in burn out, absenteeism, turnover, workplace anxiety and depression.

Acknowledging the danger that nurses face and the need for improved working conditions, the Joint Commission — an agency approved by the CMS to inspect and accredit healthcare facilities — published new standards to prevent workplace violence in January 2022. Among these standards are requirements that hospitals develop a process for continually monitoring and reporting violence, and provide violence de-escalation training to staff. While this push to formalize the accounting and management of violence at the organization level is an improvement, it is not enough.

The op-ed was published on the online healthcare news platform Healthcare Dive: https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/healthcare-nurses-workplace-violence-victims/649503/