After receiving a complaint about employees at a Pennsylvania health care facility being exposed to workplace violence, OSHA enforcement personnel found that hazard along with potential exposure to bloodborne pathogens.
Facility for troubled youth fails to protect employees from violence
September 17, 2016
In the last several months, workers at a Reading, Pa. facility for children and youth in crisis were the victims of at least ten violent assaults, federal workplace safety and health inspectors have found.
According to data from three federal datasets reviewed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), workers in health care facilities experience substantially higher estimated rates of nonfatal injury due to workplace violence compared to workers overall.
An employee working alone late at night at a Speedway gasoline station/convenience store in South Syracuse was shot in the leg on May 10, 2015, during an armed robbery – an incident OSHA says was preventable.
In October of 2010, a psychiatric technician was strangled by a patient at Napa State Hospital and a Registered Nurse working at a Contra Costa County jail in Martinez, California died as a result of being assaulted by an inmate.
In a three-month period this year, health care workers at Bergen Regional Medical Center LP in Paramus were victims of violent patients in eight incidents, including one in which a nurse suffered a laceration and bruises attempting to stop an attack on a patient.
An administrative law judge has affirmed OSHA’s finding that Integra Health Management - now operating as Integra ServiceConnect LLC – failed to protect an employee from workplace violence, which lead to her death.