Legislation update recognizes plight of abused health-care workers

Physicians, nurses and other health-care workers dedicate their lives to providing vital, lifesaving care to patients. They are trusted and compassionate caregivers who play an integral role in our hospitals to ensure patients receive the care they need to heal and recover.

Despite their role in healing others, nurses and clinicians across the country, including Illinois, are being physically, emotionally and verbally abused by patients and visitors at alarming rates. These are incidents that extend beyond threats and intimidation, resulting in serious physical harm including broken jaws and dislocated shoulders. Hospital staff are also being attacked, bitten, choked, shoved and spit on.

Abuse and violence against our health-care workers is unacceptable.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the frequency of violence between patients and health-care workers, this is not a new trend. Healthcare workers are five times more likely to experience workplace violence than employees in all other industries, with health-care workers racking up 73% of all nonfatal workplace violence injuries in 2018, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This pervasive workplace violence has severe consequences for the entire health-care system by causing physical and psychological injury for health-care workers and hampering our ability to recruit and retain health-care workers into a field already experiencing a labor shortage.

These unnecessary disruptions can become a deadly distraction, delaying urgently needed care for other patients and increasing the potential for adverse medical events.

Workplace violence of any kind is unacceptable and must be stopped. Everyone should feel safe at work.

In response to this disturbing trend, Illinois hospitals have committed resources to enhance safety and security by updating internal safety policies, revamping systems and processes, upgrading technology, providing education on how to report incidents of violence, hiring additional security and training staff on preparing and responding to aggression, including de-escalation techniques.

But, hospitals need additional support to further deter and defuse the violence being reported by health-care workers.

Earlier this year, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul attended a meeting with the Illinois Health and Hospital Association's Board of Trustees - hospital leaders who represent hospitals and health systems across the state - to hear firsthand about the disturbing threats, assaults and violence against nurses, clinicians and other hospital staff taking place on a daily basis in local emergency departments and hospital settings.

Subsequently, Attorney General Raoul convened state's attorneys and hospital leaders from across Illinois for a virtual summit to discuss the rising incidents of workplace violence in Illinois' hospitals and to collaborate on solutions. To help address this issue, the IHA is urging support of Senate Bill 1863, which adds violence against a health-care worker in a health-care setting to a list of offenses that can be viewed as an aggravating factor by a judge during sentencing.

This is not a new or enhanced penalty; it simply provides the same protections for health-care workers that are already afforded to day-care workers and schoolteachers when assaults occur in those workplaces.

Hospital leaders strongly believe this bipartisan legislation, with the support of local state's attorneys and law enforcement, will send the important message that violence against health-care workers will not be tolerated and those who harm health-care professionals will be held accountable under the law.

Being sick or injured to the point of requiring hospital care can be a worrying and stressful experience for patients and their families. But, it is never acceptable for that stress to manifest in physical and verbal abuse of health-care workers by patients, their families or other visitors in the hospital setting. It is not "part of the job" of providing care in Illinois hospitals.

I urge everyone to be kind and respectful to all health-care workers. Together, we can help eliminate assaults in the workplace, provide a much-needed sense of security and keep our health-care workers safe so they can focus on the critically important job of providing quality, compassionate health care to the patients in their communities.

• A.J. Wilhelmi is the President and CEO of the Illinois Health and Hospital Association (IHA).