by Brianna Crandall — May 18, 2015—In 2013, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported more than 23,000 significant injuries due to assault at work. More than 70 percent of these assaults were in health care and social service settings, and health care and social service workers are almost four times as likely to be injured as a result of violence than the average private sector worker.
To reduce this risk of injury, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently released an update to its 1996 and 2004 voluntary guidelines on workplace violence in healthcare and social service.
Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Healthcare and Social Service Workers includes industry best practices and highlights the most effective ways to reduce the risk of violence in various healthcare and social service settings. It is intended to cover a broad range of workers, including those working in hospitals, psychiatric facilities, pharmacies, community-care centers, and more.
The revised guidelines incorporate research from the last decade into the causes of workplace violence on health care and social service settings, risk factors that accompany working with patients or clients who display violent behavior, and the appropriate preventive measures that can be taken, amid the variety of settings in which health care and social service employees work.
The guidelines also stress the importance of developing a written workplace violence prevention program. The program should include management commitment and employee participation, worksite analysis, hazard prevention and control, safety and health training, and recordkeeping and program evaluation.
OSHA offers more information on violence prevention in all workplace settings on its Workplace Violence Web page.
