Healthcare Now Considered A Violent Field Of Work?

August 7, 2023 Glen Turpening

The healthcare field is coming under added stress from an uptick in violence not seen before. (AP News)

healthcare workers

Some hospital administrators encourage staff to placate aggressive visitors and patients because they are worried about getting bad reviews, Burger said. That’s because the Affordable Care Act tied a portion of federal reimbursement rates to consumer satisfaction surveys and low satisfaction means a hit to the financial bottom line. “The results of those surveys should never take priority over staff safety,” D’Angelo said. Eric Sean Clay, the president-elect of the International Association for Healthcare Security & Safety and vice president of security at Memorial Hermann Health in Houston, said the workplace violence rates attributed to health care facilities are “grossly underreported.” “I think that a lot of it comes down to caregivers are just very tolerant, and they come to look at it as just part of the job,” he said. “If they’re not injured, sometimes they don’t want to report it, and sometimes they don’t think there will be any change.”

BY REBECCA BOONE

The added threat of violence is not something the healthcare industry needs at this time considering the myriad of other issues that healthcare workers face. The industry was on the forefront of the Covid-19 battle and the enormous stress associated with the pandemic caused many in the field to just leave the field as a way of self preservation. Now in a post pandemic World, where everyone seems a little (or a lot) angrier, the medical field is once again bearing the brunt. Something has to give.