Nurses in New York say they experience verbal or physical violence at work more often than nurses throughout the rest of the country — a reality that could push nurses out of their jobs and jeopardize existing staffing shortages, a staffing report shows.
Nearly 60% of New York nurses experienced workplace violence in the last year, according to a report released Thursday by Incredible Health, a San Francisco-based digital nurse hiring platform.
Workplace violence – including verbal or physical assaults by patients or hospital visitors – was higher in New York than nationwide. Roughly half of nurses reported violence at their workplace across the U.S., and more than a quarter said they were likely to leave their job because of it.
The pandemic put a spotlight on violence against nurses and other health care workers, sparking concerns from organizations such as the Chicago-based industry group American Hospital Association and Oakland labor giant National Nurses United about protecting providers on hospital grounds.
“This is an area we would love for more hospital executives to pay attention to,” said Dr. Iman Abuzeid, co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health. She said there are specific strategies that hospital executives can implement to reduce violence in the workplace, such as hiring additional security personnel or training health care workers on how to de-escalate patient conflicts.
Abuzeid said that staffing challenges during the pandemic could have played a role in heightened instances of assault.
“When you have staffing shortages, there’s a higher probability of medication errors, there’s a higher probability of readmission,” Abuzeid said. “It doesn’t help that if a nurse has to cover more patients, that can result in frustration from patients or their families.”
Nationally, more than 63% of nurses reported being assigned too many patients at once, the report shows. Approximately 88% said that they believed that staffing shortages resulted in worse patient care – a significant increase from the 73% who agreed with the statement last year.
The data come from Incredible Health’s fifth annual state of nursing report, which analyzed data from the one million nurses that use its platform, the company said. The researchers also surveyed 3,300 nurses as a part of their methodology.
Incredible Health, founded in 2017, partners with 1,500 hospitals across the country, including NYU Langone, New York-Presbyterian and Catholic Health, Abuzeid said.
Amanda D'Ambrosio , 2024-03-18 10:33:04
Source link
