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Abstract
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On June 2, 2022, a disgruntled patient entered St. Francis hospital in Tulsa with a pistol and a semi-automatic rifle. The gunman had previously had back surgery by a physician, Preston Phillips, MD, and, per reports, blamed him for his post-surgical pain and wanted revenge.1
He ultimately ended up murdering his intended target, Dr. Phillips, as well as another physician and two others who got in his way. Though Dr. Phillips' story got more attention in the press and physician murders are more sensationalized, his story is unfortunately not unique; less than two weeks after the Tulsa shooting, a nurse, and a paramedic were stabbed and critically injured by a patient in a St. Louis hospital.2
Overall, there is not a lot of data on the murders of healthcare workers, but the Bureau of Labor statistics reported 64 on-the-job fatalities for healthcare workers in 2020.3 Non-fatal assaults, on the other hand, are far more prevalent, with close to half a million in 2020,4 and with healthcare accounting for nearly as many serious violent injuries as all other industries combined.5,6 The data are limited by the sheer lack of reporting on workplace violence. Even the American Medical Association (AMA) Taskforce on Workplace Violence acknowledges that "available data indicate that health care workers experience high rates of workplace violence [but] such events are widely underreported."5-7 This is typically due to a lack of faith that reporting would lead to meaningful change, not having time to report, lack of a formal reporting system, and fear of retaliation.5,7 In this review, we discuss the scope and magnitude of workplace violence in healthcare, the subgroups most affected, how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted rates of violence against healthcare workers, and strategies for reducing risk.
Patients are responsible for the majority of violence towards healthcare workers, thus trends in violence can be best understood by examining which patients pose the highest risk for violence. The risk of workplace violence is not distributed evenly across specialty. Data shows that those who work in the emergency department, in geriatrics, or in psychiatry are substantially more likely to experience violence.8 This may be partly explained by the fact that these patient populations are more likely to be intoxicated, exhibiting psychosis, delirious, or have dementia, which are known risk factors for violence...
Language: en |