They suffered 1,061 of the state’s 2,122 serious workplace assaults
that resulted in medical treatment or lost work time, says Syed S. Islam,
M.B.B.S., Dr.P.H., associate professor of community medicine at West
Virginia University.
Nearly all of these serious attacks on health care workers came from the
people they were trying to help — patients or nursing home residents.
Nationally, as many as 45 percent of workplace assaults are committed
by patients.
“Health care workers had the highest number of assault claims, followed
by public safety employees and teachers,” Islam says. “Together,
these three occupations account for almost 75 percent of the assault
cases in that time.”
While healthcare workers had the highest absolute number of assaults,
public safety workers experienced the highest rate of assault injuries
(number of new cases per 100 workers), due to the nature of their work.
Teachers were identified as a high risk occupation. However, further information
is needed to identify what type of teachers or setting (i.e., youth shelters,
juvenile correctional facilities, schools) contributed to this finding.
The research, published in the July issue of the American
Journal of Preventive Medicine, reviewed workers’ compensation injuries from 1996 to
1999 in cases where violence was intentionally inflicted on an employee.
To find the cases for inclusion in the study, Islam went looking through
the state’s workers’ compensation database using such keywords
as: fight, assault, altercation, dispute, attack, kill, employee, boss,
client and coworker.
For all three occupations, the hours from midnight to 8 a.m. were the
most dangerous, but they were especially so for female healthcare workers.
These women sustained 21 of the 22 severe assaults in that time period.
Furthermore, 14 out of those 22 nighttime assault injuries happened in
nursing homes, Islam says, meaning that protecting women healthcare workers
on night duty will be an important prevention strategy.
Male workers sustained the bulk of the injuries in public safety because
they form a larger proportion of that workforce.
“Sprain was the most common severe assault injury across these three
high-risk occupations,” Islam says. “Other common injuries
were bruises and fractures among health care workers, fractures and lacerations
among public safety personnel and bruises and fractures among teachers.”
The West Virginia researchers also noticed a surge in assault injuries
from February to June, which Islam calls a “springtime peak.” These
variations in time and place of assaults might help identify prevention
strategies. Islam suggests that these occupational, daily and seasonal
hot spots should be taken into consideration when organizations plan
security or train workers in violence awareness.
The project was funded through an internal grant from the West Virginia
Workers’ Compensation Division’s Bureau of Employment Program
of the State of West Virginia.
