Health-care workers at risk

Opinion

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This article was published 29/02/2024 (558 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hospitals are supposed to be sites of healing and recovery.

Too often, they are also the sites of traumatic violence at the hands of people seeking medical attention.

Manitoba’s Nurses Union was busy last week calling for increased security measures at two of Winnipeg’s major hospitals following recent reports of patient assaults on staff.

At Victoria Hospital, an anonymous nurse blew the whistle on increasing violence in the psychiatric unit, outlining several disturbing incidents in an email to the union. Nurses have been kicked and choked. Security and other staff members have been punched, bitten and spat on. Frontline staff have suffered concussions and back injuries during episodes, according to the anecdotal accounts.

At the Health Sciences Centre, a security guard was allegedly stabbed with a pocket knife last week by an agitated emergency room patient.

These kinds of troubling incidents are not new, nor are they uncommon in the health-care field. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Between 2006 and 2010, health-care workers were the largest group of people to take a leave from work to recover from injuries caused by assault and violence on the job, more than employees in any other industry covered by the Workers Compensation Board.

From 2016 to 2018, there were 444 violent incidents — encompassing verbal abuse, threats of violence and physical aggression — reported at the Health Sciences Centre and 175 such cases at the Grace Hospital. Some episodes were cited as deliberate acts, while others were perpetrated by patients with dementia or another disorienting condition.

At the time, the growing crystal meth crisis was also blamed as a suspected cause for the increasing number of “code whites” — the emergency code denoting violent incidents — at local hospitals.

The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t do the situation any favours.

At the height of the global health crisis, hospital staff experienced a spike in aggression and abuse from members of the public frustrated by public health guidelines. The pandemic also pushed workers and hospital capacity to the brink, making the ongoing instances of violence that much more dire.

Manitoba’s health-care system continues to suffer from a chronic shortage of qualified staff due to an exodus of burned-out workers amid the pandemic. The persistent spectre of violence while doing one’s job isn’t a strong selling point for recruitment.

In response to last week’s reports of assault, the Manitoba Nurses Union called on the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority to increase security presence in the psych ward at the Vic and to consider adding metal detectors to entrances at HSC.

The WRHA doesn’t readily provide statistics on the number of violent incidents at local hospitals, making it difficult to quantify the scope and state of the issue. What is clear is that more needs to be done to protect frontline workers.

Last spring, the NDP opposition chastised the Progressive Conservative government for failing to install institutional safety officers in any of the province’s hospitals. Despite new legislation allowing special security guards to patrol health centres armed with batons, handcuffs and pepper spray, exactly zero positions have been filled in the last four years.

The NDP are now in a position to heed their own advice.

Health-care workers shouldn’t have to risk their safety while providing life-saving care. Better protection for nurses and health-care aides needs to be a pillar of the current government’s work to improve Manitoba’s health-care system.