The Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) announced that it had joined forces with the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the American College of Emergency Physicians on Capitol Hill to detail workplace violence in health care. Representatives of the three organizations shared statistics and urged lawmakers to pass legislation to address the crisis.
According to a press release from the ENA, during a briefing for congressional staffers on March 22, representatives from these organizations utilized data and personal narratives to highlight the severity of violence in healthcare workplaces. They emphasized that this crisis disproportionately affects emergency department workers. For instance, hospital employees suffer serious injuries related to workplace violence at a rate six times higher than all other private sector employees in the United States. Studies have shown that emergency nurses and other emergency department workers experience violence approximately once every two months.
The ENA press release also referenced a 2024 survey conducted by the association, which found that 56% of about 500 member emergency nurses had been verbally assaulted, threatened with violence, or physically assaulted in the previous 30 days. Additional data from ANA indicates that up to 80% of workplace violence experienced by nurses goes unreported.
ENA President Chris Dellinger expressed his firsthand experience with such incidents: "As an emergency nurse for 30 years, I understand what violence in the ED looks like—I have experienced it personally and watched countless co-workers victimized all while simply trying to care for patients," he said. "Getting kicked, punched, slapped, spit on, or attacked with objects is not a part of the job. It cannot be tolerated any longer."
The ENA press release noted that two bills are currently under consideration: The Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act and the Safety From Violence for Healthcare Employees Act. The former aims to enhance efforts to mitigate workplace violence while the latter seeks to make assaulting a hospital employee a federal crime.
"Violence against health care professionals—the very people who are entrusted to care for the sick and encourage healing—is absolutely unacceptable and reprehensible," said ANA President Jennifer Mensik Kennedy. "Passage of federal legislation to protect our nurses and other health care workers and keep them safe is something the American Nurses Association will never stop advocating for, and it is long overdue."
