Recognizing the risks they face at the hands of their patients, nurses in Massachusetts have spoken out about workplace violence and are lobbying for legislation designed to protect them from on-the-job abuse and assault.

Testifying on June 20 in favor of SB 1345, an act requiring health care employers to develop and implement programs to prevent workplace violence, nurses from the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) recounted situations in which they were physically or verbally attacked by patients and/or patients’ families. The nurses reported that their workplaces did not protect them from such attacks.

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 48 percent of all non-fatal assaults in the U.S. workplace are committed by health care patients. The U.S. Department of Labor reported that nurses and other personal care workers suffer violent assaults at a rate that’s 12 times higher than other industries.

David Schildmeier, spokesperson for the MNA, explained the need for the bill and what it would require.

“There is an epidemic of violence in health care,” he said. “But most the violent acts we see are preventable. Hospitals are contributing to the violence by not having enough staff, not having enough security, not taking the issue seriously enough and not taking steps to prevent it.”

He added that the bill would require all health care providers to do three things: an assessment of their facility or workplace to identify causes or potential causes that would contribute to violence; come up with a plan, based on that assessment, to implement steps and procedures to mitigate those causes; and put a system in place to immediately support a victim of workplace violence. The third, he said, is vitally important in a system that is not currently supporting victims.

“Nurses and other health care workers are not being given the care they deserve,” Schildmeier added. “The culture has not been to treat a nurse as we would treat anyone else who suffered an assault.”

Often, he continued, the assumption is made that if a nurse is attacked, it is simply a part of her job.

“It is not part of a nurse’s job,” he asserted.

While the bill received no opposing testimony at the hearing, the Massachusetts Hospital Association sent a letter afterward opposing the legislation. Still, Schildmeier is hopeful that it will continue to build the momentum it needs to pass.

“Last year it made it out of committee but didn’t make it any farther. We anticipate that it will get out this year and the test will be to see if it can pass,” he said. “This bill is vitally important because violence is on the rise and has been identified as a chronic, and growing, problem in health care.”