DENVER — State lawmakers will consider new legislation designed to help protect employees at health care facilities from violence in the workplace.
“Everyone’s nerves are frayed. Everyone’s stressed. The demand, the lack of staff, nobody has reserves to draw on when things get tense,” said Colleen Casper, a registered nurse and executive director of the Colorado Nurses Association.
“And that’s when we have to be competent to be able to deescalate, use trauma-informed skills, really help each other to a place of assistance instead of fighting, violence.”
Risk isn’t new to healthcare, but providers say violent situations have been escalating in recent years — in large part, during the pandemic.
Nurses, doctors, and other staff members have shared stories of abuse from patients and visitors, and sometimes, frustrations about how those issues have been managed by hospital leadership.
HB24-1066, The Violence Prevention in Health-care Settings Act, applies to various facilities including hospitals, freestanding emergency rooms and assisted living facilities.
The bill, sponsored by Democrats, would require facilities to:
- Establish a workplace violence prevention committee to document and review workplace violence incidents at the facility and develop and regularly review a workplace violence prevention plan for the facility.
- Adopt, implement, enforce, and update the plan.
- Provide training on the plan and on workplace violence prevention.
- Submit biannual workplace violence incident reports to the Department of Public Health and Environment or the Behavioral Health Administration, as applicable.
- If a workplace violence incident occurs, offer post-incident services to affected staff.
“It will standardize, normalize, the language and processes around addressing workplace violence,” Casper said. “It won’t be something we have to hide from the public. We engage with local police, district attorneys, with our front-line staff and inform policy that benefits everyone, so that workers are safe, and patients are safe.”
“I think what makes this bill… special is it really does amplify workers on the ground,” said State Representative Eliza Hamrick (D-Centennial). “With patients, first responders, it gives them power — the voice — to make these violence prevention committees really strong, to have a voice what their workplace is like. That doesn’t happen very often.”
“In almost every hospital I’ve visited, I’ve heard reports of violence, usually really recent examples of it. And often the CEO is personally aware of the most recent incident, what it involved, the circumstances and consequences,” said Jeff Tieman, president and CEO of the Colorado Hospital Association. “The other things I’ve heard is reports of measures hospitals put in place to address this, to prevent or minimize acts of violence in their facilities and to protect both staff and patients.”
Tieman called the problem of violence at healthcare facilities pervasive, and CHA even shared a study last year sharing some data behind the issue.
But CHA questions if this bill is the best way to solve it.
“We’re definitely for the concept, which is to protect healthcare workers,” Tieman said. “What we are evaluating is specific provisions of the legislation to ensure it's actually meaningful and doesn't create new reporting requirements or duplicate requirements already on the books. We want to make sure it does something really meaningful and helpful.”
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