BY KATY COOPER
I was shocked but not surprised to see the viral video of Utah nurse Alex Wubbels being violently handcuffed and arrested for correctly refusing to allow a police officer to draw blood from an unconscious, hospitalized patient. While Alex's specific circumstances are unusual, violence against nurses is not.
Two days before I saw the video, I was punched in the chest twice by an agitated patient with a history of violence. The patient was disoriented following a traumatic brain injury. Thankfully, I wasn't injured. Violent incidents aren't common in my hospital department, but routine, systemic violence is a universal experience for nurses and a regular occurrence for far too many of my colleagues who work in high-risk areas including the emergency and behavioral health departments.
In an average year, three out of four hospital nurses report being physically or verbally abused by patients or visitors and the problem is severely underreported. Violence against nurses and other health care workers has seeped into the culture of health care and threatens to become a normal 'part of the job,' reducing workplace violence to something so mundane it's barely worth mentioning.
But violence in all forms must be addressed. No one should be forced to work where they expect to be abused. And no one should accept a culture of silence that allows attacks and abuse of caregivers to continue unchecked. Working in a hazardous environment leads to injuries and fear, which drive nurses and health care workers out of their professions. Creating a safe health care environment is just as critical for patients. They need a secure space to get well and will need even more care and qualified caregivers as our population continues to age.
The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) has shone a light on the problems of endemic violence against nurses and health care staff for years. We've worked together with SEIU 49, the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, legislators, local hospitals and other health advocates to start changing a culture where violence has become accepted. This work isn't easy, but we can't afford to wait until the damage is already done. We must act now to encourage greater collaboration between hospitals, health care facilities and health care providers as we adopt comprehensive, evidence-based strategies to prevent workplace violence in health care. That includes implementing mandatory reporting systems, adding full-time security in high-risk areas, increasing staff training in violence prevention and de-escalation strategies and providing robust support to nurses and health care workers who are victims of workplace violence.
As we saw in the Alex Wubbels video, even when a nurse does everything right, there is always a risk. We can't eliminate all violence against nurses and health care workers, but we can do more to prevent it and to change the culture of accepted violence that's been allowed to promulgate in health care for too long.
Nurses, health care workers and patients deserve better.
Katy Cooper, BSN, RN, CCRN, is president of the Oregon Nurses Association and an intensive care nurse at a Portland-area hospital. She lives in Southeast Portland.
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