Ending Health Care Workplace Violence – For Good
4/1/2025
This article first appeared as a column in the 2025 April issue of South Florida Hospital News
By Mary Mayhew, FHA President and CEO
April marks Workplace Violence Awareness Month, a cross-industry month to increase awareness and enhance advocacy to ensure workplaces are free from violence, whether verbal abuse, threatening behavior, or physical and/or sexual assault. For health care workers, whose work is healing work, the imperative for a violence-free workplace is particularly urgent.
Health care workers are five times more likely to experience workplace violence than employees in other industries. In the last two years alone, 40 percent of health care workers experienced a violent incident, according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
Putting into action zero tolerance of violence against health care workers requires an all-hands-on-deck approach from the highest levels of hospital board leadership to the front lines. It also requires support from policymakers. Florida’s Senate Bill 568, passed in 2023 and now state law, is a strong example of legislative leadership and signals that violence against health care workers is absolutely and unequivocally unacceptable. SB 568 strengthens the criminal penalties against anyone perpetrating an assault on a health care worker anywhere in a hospital.
At the federal level, the Safety from Violence for Healthcare Employees Act was introduced in the previous Congress and quickly garnered 126 bipartisan co-sponsors, including seven from the Florida delegation. A landmark piece of legislation, it proposed providing federal protections, similar to those in place for airport and airline workers, to appropriately punish those perpetrating acts of violence against hospital workers. Continuing to advocate for its passage amid a crowded federal agenda is a priority for hospitals and health care professionals alike.
Both the state and federal policies are essential because they convey in no uncertain terms that violence against health care workers will not be tolerated. But the penalties they enshrine are after-the-fact; they are deployed after a violent incident, after a health care professional is harmed.
Hospitals themselves aren’t waiting for those incidents to occur. They are working to prevent incidents of violence, and to be proactive to protect their staff from any threatening behaviors so that the violence never occurs in the first place.
The Joint Commission released workplace violence standards for TJC-accredited hospitals in 2022. Following guidelines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the standards delineate the elements of a hospital workplace violence prevention program: 1) a clearly written workplace violence policy statement; 2) establishment of a threat assessment team; 3) worksite hazard assessments (annual security & workplace violence assessments); 4) workplace hazard control and prevention (security measures); 5) training and education; 6) incident reporting, investigation, follow-up and evaluation, and 8) recordkeeping.
These standards provide both an expectation and essential flexibility for hospitals to develop and deploy programs responsive to their communities and circumstances so that an inflexible, one-size-fits-all program is not mandated. From overt security measures, including lockdown procedures and the use of metal detectors, to de-escalation techniques and mandatory reporting, there is no single or uniform policy or procedure to prevent and respond to workplace violence.
We need comprehensive, holistic, and all-hands programs that are regularly improved and enhanced based on new data, research, and best practices.
One violent incident against a health care worker is one too many. A violent incident of any form should not go unpunished, but, more importantly, should be prevented. Florida’s hospitals, from the largest of academic medical centers to the smallest of rural critical access hospitals, are investing in tools, personnel, policies and procedures, technologies, and whatever it takes to keep their most essential resource – their workforce – safe.
This workplace violence awareness month, we mourn those who lost their lives to workplace violence, grieve with those who suffered trauma from workplace violence, and pledge to make Florida hospitals the safest of workplaces for Florida’s treasured health care workforce.