METHUEN — Susan Lander moved to Massachusetts with hopes of working in psychiatric mental health as a traveling nurse. The conditions, however, were drastically unlike her expectations. She was met with violence, which in turn became PTSD surrounding the job.
“I won’t go back to nursing,” Lander said. “I won’t go back to working with people in the public again.”
Lander became contracted with Holy Family Hospital in Methuen. She later took on a permanent job, being advised that security is able to watch with cameras and arrive at incidences prior to nurses.
Even still, one patient kicked in a door at the nurses station while a nurse was in their alone. Another patient with mental health issues pulled an elderly man’s beard and kicked a pregnant woman.
For Lander, she was strangled by a man in the psychiatric ward.
The patient was originally admitted into Holy Family’s sister hospital but was sent home without proper help or medication. He went to the Methuen location then, where Lander worked. He strangled her to the point where she lost consciousness and another nurse had to the tackle the two to get the patient off of Lander.
And yet Holy Family told Lander that the event was “unpreventable.” Now Landers is speaking out and working to get nurses better protection.
State lawmakers heard on Wednesday legislation on implementing procedures in hospitals to combat violence nurses and other direct care staff are facing.
The Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security heard from nurses like Lander, the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) president and state lawmakers about a bill that would require hospitals to design and implement policies and procedures to prevent and protect nurses from the violence they often face.
“We really think our health care settings need to do more to be able to protect the very people they are caring for,” said State Sen. Joan Lovely.
Lovely sponsored the bill, H-2381, with Sens. Paul Feeney, Robyn Kennedy and Jack Lewis. The house concurred on Feb. 16 and on the same day the senate referred the bill to the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security.
The bill would require health care employers to perform annual risk assessments and identify factors which may put employees at risk, according to David Schildmeier, director of public communications at the MNA. Hospitals would have to look at factors like time of day, public access and staffing levels that affect safety.
A program would then be developed by individual hospitals, including a written violence prevention plan based on the assessments.
“Violence in health care has been an epidemic for many years, resulting in nurses and other direct care staff being assaulted on the job more than any other worker,” said Katie Murphy, MNA president. “Without legislation action, hospitals and other health care facilities are under no obligation to put the measures in place that will help to mitigate workplace violence — that is why we are asking the legislature to take action to protect those on the frontlines from these unwarranted and traumatizing attacks.”
The bill also requires the creation of an in-house crisis response team to support victims of workplace violence.
Nurses that testified Wednesday called the issue just the “tip of the iceberg.”
“They’re not going to make us safe,” Lander said. “They’re not going to do it on their own.”
The MNA said the issue is an “epidemic of violence.” Health care workers face violence at a rate of five to 12 times higher than the estimated rates for workers overall, according to a recent Government Accountability Office reports.
Rep. Denise Garlick, who has worked on the bill, said she experienced the violence while serving as a nurse. Garlick was previously the president of the MNA and noted that the issue goes beyond the nurses.
“That is the way they are allowing patients to be treated,” she said. “That is the way they are allowing the public to be treated. This is unacceptable.”
Health care workers experience the most non-fatal workplace violence compared to other professions, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Violence against nurses and other staff accounts for nearly 70% of all non-fatal workplace assaults.
And more than 80% of emergency department nurses have been the victim of workplace violence, according to the Emergency Nurses Association.
The issue also seems to be getting worse. In 2020, an incident occurred every 57 minutes, according to data from the MNA. That statistic became one incident every 49 minutes in 2021 and every 38 minutes in 2022.
The MNA also showed that nurses are fearing the violence in its 2023 “State of Nursing in Massachusetts.” Almost a quarter of nurses do not feel safe in their workplace, an increase from 9% in 2019 and 17% in 2020, according to the data.
“It’s really really unsafe out there,” Lander said.
Follow Monica on Twitter at @MonicaSager3
Follow Monica on Twitter at @MonicaSager3