Meanwhile, gun violence in our country has profoundly increased during the pandemic, creating an unstable backdrop to this tension.
Obviously, acts of violence against health care workers are unacceptable. Such events can pose real physical harms to providers, possibly resulting in irreversible injury, health problems, or even death. Additionally, they can yield long-term psychological harms, increase burnout, and impact job satisfaction.
Health care providers already make huge personal sacrifices to pursue their profession, and this threat of violence is an additional burden they unfortunately face.
In addition to the direct harm to employees, violence also has broader systemic detriments to patient outcomes and health care economics. Acts of violence against health care workers can lower the quality of care provided to patients – either directly, by virtue of being present during such dangerous situations, or indirectly, as stressed or burned-out providers may understandably be unable to provide optimal care. Rates of avoidable errors naturally rise in the presence of such stressors.
Unfortunately, regulations protecting health care workers from violence are sparse, and hospitals are not currently required to implement prevention plans for workplace violence. There are certainly some common-sense changes that institutions have begun implementing, including the use of metal detectors upon entry or the increased presence of security staff, but generally, it is questionable whether these measures alone can fully eliminate violence.
The first step in addressing this unacceptably common issue is to boost awareness and brainstorm creative solutions. Health care workers and medical students should at least be made aware of this widely prevalent threat, and safety training can be implemented to parallel that of our nation’s other schools, which have unfortunately faced a similar plight for decades.
However, similar to most issues in medicine, prevention is certainly the best strategy. By highlighting the unbelievably prevalent nature of this issue, along with its severe human and financial costs, hopefully we can draw the attention of policymakers to catalyze lasting change with a preventative focus.
The Thomas Jefferson University community responded to this tragic event with a message of resilience, offering mental health services, increasing its law enforcement presence, and promising to revisit physical security measures. This all-too-familiar pattern has been seen with previous acts of violence, but it has not yet yielded a true solution. Yet there’s not too much more an individual hospital can do without broader systemic change.
We must improve our awareness and understanding of the deep-rooted factors underlying this public health crisis and adapt how we communicate about them to achieve real progress.
Yash Shah is a first-year medical student at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.