Bill aims to protect health care workers

Proposal would compel employers to implement violence prevention plans

Amid increasing violence against workers in health care settings, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, has reintroduced a bill that would hold employers accountable.

The bill, H.R. 1309, directs the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, to require health care and social service employers to write and implement workplace violence prevention plans.

OSHA would be able to enforce the new requirement the same way it enforces existing ones.

“Health care and social service workers face a disproportionate amount of violence at work, and the data shows that these incidents are on the rise,” Courtney said. “Safety experts, employees and members of Congress have been pressing OSHA to address this outsized risk of violence for years, but have seen no meaningful action.”

Health care and social service workers — including nurses, social workers and psychiatric, home health and personal care aides — suffered 69 percent of all workplace violence injuries in 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the private health care and social service sectors, bureau data show workplace violence injury rates increased by 63 percent from 2006 to 2016.

As it stands, OSHA doesn’t address workplace violence. And while as-

“Safety experts, employees and members of Congress have been pressing OSHA to address this outsized risk of violence for years, but have seen no meaningful action.”

REP. JOE COURTNEY, D-2ND DISTRICT

sault on a health care worker is a Class B felony in Connecticut, the statute only applies if a person shows intent to stop the employee from doing his or her job, which can be tough to prove.

Many employees leave the industry to escape violence at the hands of disgruntled or unstable patients or visitors, medical professionals have told The Day.

AFT Connecticut Executive Vice President John Brady, who worked as a nurse at the William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich from 1994 through 2015, is among those in support of Courtney’s bill. During his tenure at Backus, he learned an emotionally unstable patient had ripped a medication scanner from a nurse and beat her over the head with it until she bled. Then he learned little was in place to protect other employees from similar attacks.

Brady, whose union represents about 7,500 nurses, technicians and health care workers, said he began helping Courtney craft the bill in 2016.

Carl J. Schiessl, senior director of regulatory advocacy for the Connecticut Hospital Association, also spoke in favor of the bill.

Schiessl said the association began working with the state’s hospitals and health systems in 2016 to boost worker satisfaction and safety as part of the Safer Hospitals Initiative. He said Courtney’s bill aligns with the initiative’s goals.

“We look forward to continuing to work with (the legislators) to continue to keep our hospitals safe in Connecticut,” he said.

Courtney introduced a similar bill last session but the majority in Congress never scheduled it for a hearing and thus it never went to the floor for a full vote. He said he thinks the bill has a better shot this time around, in part because the Education and Labor Committee’s Subcommittee on Workforce Protections is hosting a hearing Wednesday on protecting health care and social workers from workplace violence.

“With the committee’s announcement ... we can be assured that this bill is finally poised to move, and not just sit on the shelf,” Courtney said.