WASHINGTON (7News) — We count on them during our worst moments, but many of us don’t realize the constant threat faced by healthcare workers: savage attacks from the very people they’re trying to help. They are five times more likely to be injured by violence on the job than other lines of work. We’ve reported on this for years, and now we’re asking why more hasn’t been done to protect our critical caregivers.
Maryland nurse Lisa Fischer walked us into an ER triage room at her hospital in a well-to-do Maryland suburb just outside of D.C.
“This is the room where I was assaulted,” she said.
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Fischer is among thousands of nurses and doctors across the country, who are increasingly finding themselves defenseless to violent attacks in those safe spaces.
“She basically stood up, punched me, and I fell off my chair, into this desk,” she said as she walked us through the incident that left her beaten and bruised with a black eye and stitches.
“I was totally shocked,” said Fischer. “I had no idea it was coming. I just remember blanking out and being trapped in the room.”
The patient slammed the door, blocked it, and came at Fischer with a chair.
Those unpredictable attacks are happening more often than you might think.
“It is definitely on the rise. And it’s not just here,” said Fischer. “It’s not just my county or Maryland. It’s nationwide.”
She’s right. A nurse in Florida was nearly beaten to death by a patient. A gunman in Pennsylvania used nurses as human shields, and doctors have been murdered at work in cases across the country – including two in Oklahoma and one in Tennessee.
And it’s getting worse.
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In 2015, a survey found that 47 percent of emergency room doctors and one in four nurses reported being physically assaulted at work. Ten years later, a staggering 91 percent of ER doctors and 80 percent of nurses report violence on the job.
“I can say just in hospitals that I’m aware of, we’ve had more than six incidents,” said Fischer. “Several nurses have been hospitalized, several nurses have not been able to come back to work or have had permanent impairments, and that’s just really in the last two or three years.”
She said she knows nurses with injuries that range from head trauma requiring hospitalization and severe cuts to hand injuries so extreme that nurses suffered permanent damage, rendering them incapable of starting IVs.
Only a dozen states have laws requiring healthcare employers to create workplace violence prevention plans.
In June, Virginia joined that list, mandating hospitals create a system to document and track violence.
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There have been attempts at the federal level to protect healthcare workers, but none have become law.
“When you look closely, this has become a real national crisis really,” said US Senator Chris Van Hollen.
Van Hollen is co-sponsoring a bill that requires healthcare employers to create a violence prevention plan.
In the last four years, at least two bills that would increase protections for healthcare workers seemed to have momentum. One had 145 co-sponsors, and another 170. Both times the bills were derailed.
“There are some folks that just don’t like the idea ever of putting in place work safety regulations,” said Van Hollen. “They prefer sort of a free-for-all environment. I think that’s a mistake.”
The cost isn’t just pain and suffering. A new report from the American Hospital Association found the annual financial cost of violence at hospitals was upwards of $18 billion.
It’s been nearly ten years since legislation of this sort was first introduced. Van Hollen hopes this time will be different. “We’ve introduced this piece of legislation,” he said. “We hope to get it over the finish line. We unfortunately do not have strong bipartisan support at this moment.”
Van Hollen told us he is talking to his republican colleagues, trying to rally broad support for the bill. The bill he has co-sponsored is one of several that are in play right now to better protect healthcare workers. It’s unclear if lawmakers will agree on any of them.
Lisa Fischer says the assault on her has strengthened her resolve as an advocate on behalf of all medical professionals. “I’m part of the Emergency Nurses Association, and that organization goes to Congress every April or May,” she said.
She was in DC this spring, lobbying for a workplace violence bill, and met with lawmakers, including Senator Van Hollen. “I went with hundreds of nurses from all over the country to ask their representatives to support these two bills, one of which is trying to make it a felony to assault a healthcare worker in a hospital or really any hospital worker,” said Fischer.
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For 20 years, Fischer has been serving her Maryland community as a Charge Nurse and ER nurse and prior to that, as a paramedic. She’s doing her job and says it’s time for Congress to do theirs.
“We are here to help people,” said Fischer. “We are nurses that get into these unpredictable situations that are sometimes out of our control, but being assaulted is not part of our job.”
Several times during our interview with Senator Van Hollen he stressed the importance of constituents calling and expressing their support of action to protect healthcare workers. He said those calls and emails have a huge impact on US lawmakers. We’ll show you how to contact your member of Congress here.
If you have a personal experience with this subject, or have a story you want to share, follow and DM Lisa Fletcher on X at @lisa_fletch
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