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Late last month, 45-year-old physician Henry Michael Bello walked into Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center in New York where he used to work and opened fire with an assault rifle, killing a fellow doctor and wounding six other people.
Following the shooting spree, police say Bello, who was reportedly forced to resign from his post at the hospital in 2015, tried to set himself on fire but later turned the gun on himself after the self-immolation attempt failed. The shooting was but one extreme example of the numerous workplace violence threats that workers in healthcare facilities across the country face every day.
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According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, from 2002 to 2013, the rate of serious workplace violence incidents, which are defined as those requiring days off for an injured worker to recover, were more than four times greater in healthcare than private industry on average.
The most recent statistics compiled by the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) also paint a grim picture with regards to the rate at which incidents of violence are occurring in hospitals.
The “2017 Healthcare Crime Survey,” which analyzed the responses of security professionals at 222 U.S. hospitals, found that "Workplace Violence Type 2" assaults, which are acts of violence committed against hospital staff by patients and visitors, accounted for 89 percent of all assaults and aggravated assaults at hospitals from 2012 to 2016.
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Drilling down even further, the study found that hospitals suffered 1.4 Type 2 assaults and 0.7 Type 2 aggravated assaults for every 100 employees on staff last year.
By their very nature, hospitals and other healthcare facilities inherently contain many of the combustible elements that can result in outbursts of violence.
With the exception of the birth of a child, the vast majority of people seeking treatment at a hospital are not there because they want to be, friends and relatives of patients are under a great amount of stress concerned about the welfare of their loved ones, and there are a number of other elements – mental health conditions, narcotics addiction, etc. – that can also play a factor in someone’s propensity for violent behavior.
However, nearly everyone agrees that workplace violence in the healthcare environment is not a new phenomenon but rather doctors, nurses and other staff are now more likely to report it.
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