Workplace Violence: The Hidden Epidemic Plaguing Health Care Workers

Abstract

Health care workers have never had an easy job – or a safe job. Home care workers, nurses and hospital workers, who frequently must lift heavy patients and work with hazardous drugs and chemicals, have higher injury rates than construction workers or coal miners. Added to that are injuries and sometimes deaths resulting from assaults and workplace violence, especially in emergency rooms, mental health facilities and long-term care facilities. It is their story that health and safety advocates Margaret M. Keith and James T. Brophy tackle in Code White: Sounding the Alarm on Violence Against Healthcare Workers. But this isn’t just a book about horror stories. Keith and Brophy dig deep into the root causes of violence against healthcare workers and then make recommendations about what can be done to protect healthcare workers. Healthcare workers were not trained in mixed martial arts. There are no classes in self-defense on nursing school curricula. Nevertheless, their workplaces often resemble combat zones: