“Hospitals and clinics remain among the most violent workplaces in America, continuing to strain health workers in the aftermath of the pandemic experience,” Maya Goldman writes over at Axios. “The situation is bad enough that the American Hospital Association and the FBI last week announced that they’re collaborating on resources to help hospitals make threat assessments and work to mitigate risks. ‘The problem of physical security in a hospital is incredibly complex, because you have to have access to the general public. You have to allow people in and out,’ said Scott Gee, AHA’s deputy national adviser for cybersecurity and risk. ‘It’s difficult to determine who’s a threat and who’s not.’ Verbal threats or physical assault against doctors, nurses and other health workers typically come from patients’ family or friends, or from patients themselves. Even as violent crime ticks down in large U.S. cities, violence in health care settings continues due to long wait times, unmet patient needs and resource shortages in the sector, according to a recent review in the journal eClinicalMedicine.” Maya Goldman, “Workplace violence at hospitals continues to surge,” Axios.
