Massachusetts Senate President Karen Spilka has unveiled a bill that aims to protect health care workers from pervasive violence, particularly in hospital settings.
The legislation would require health care employers to conduct annual facility risk assessments, create workplace violence prevention programs and report incidents to the Department of Public Health each year.
“In Massachusetts, every 36 minutes — I repeat that — every 36 minutes, a healthcare worker is subjected to workplace violence,” said Spilka. “These are the people that we rely upon at our most vulnerable moments, yet we are failing to protect them.”
On Thursday, the Senate Ways and Means Committee advanced the legislation, sending it to the full state Senate for further consideration.
Nearly seven out of 10 nurses have experienced assault on the job, according to the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
The bill’s unveiling also comes nearly three months after two patients were charged with assault and battery for attacking healthcare workers at Tewksbury State Hospital.
The workplace violence crisis has increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to an op-ed written by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, 1199SEIU and the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association. Stress on patients and visitors escalated in part because of pressures ranging from COVID-related safety restrictions to longer wait times.
Shannon Bush, who has been a nurse for 20 years, said she has been physically assaulted three times throughout her career, and is verbally assaulted daily.
“One of the assaults resulted in me being out of work for 12 weeks. I missed a whole summer with my daughter,” she said. “It’s not OK, and it should not be accepted. I was caring for somebody, trying to make sure that they were okay, and I was armbarred to the side of my head.”
Bush said she has also witnessed her coworkers, patients and visitors be sexually and verbally assaulted.
Liz Taranto, a nurse represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, said workplace violence has made it harder to provide quality care to patients.
“I had a patient whose defibrillator had just gone off, and he was trying to get out of bed,” she said. “As I moved toward him to lift his legs back into bed, we made eye contact, and he kicked me right in the throat. The assault resulted in my trachea being bruised.”
Taranto said the incident that affected her the most was when a patient told her he was going to find her and kill her when he left the hospital.
“That’s the one that stayed, because it didn’t go away when my shift ended. Experiences like these have lasting effects and they change the way we practice,” she said. “Nursing is about trust and connection, which is hard to build when you’re worried about your own safety.”
Under the legislation, employers would be required to offer paid leave to healthcare workers assaulted on the job to cover time spent receiving medical care or pursuing legal action against their attacker.
Spilka said the crisis “is driving our frontline caregivers, caregivers out of the field entirely.”
“When physical danger forces valued staff to walk away, the entire system suffers,” she said. “Fewer workers clearly means ... less accessible care and diminished quality of care for all of us.”
Katie Murphy, president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, said in her 51 years as a nurse, she’s witnessed violence against every member of a healthcare team.
“I have heard from countless frontline nurses and healthcare professionals about their own experiences with workplace violence, and each time I was asked, ‘There ought to be a law, there must be something we can do to protect ourselves and our patients,’” she said. “Now, when this legislation passes, there will be.”
Spilka said the chamber is expected to vote on the violence prevention bill next week.
