No Healthcare Worker Should Have to Accept Violence as “Part of the Job”
The Issue
No Healthcare Worker Should Have to Accept Violence as “Part of the Job”
I am an emergency room nurse. Like countless healthcare workers, I have watched verbal threats, physical assaults, harassment, intimidation, and near misses become so common that many are never formally reported.
We are told that violence is simply part of working in healthcare.
It is not.
Healthcare workers are punched, kicked, bitten, threatened, stalked, sexually harassed, and injured while trying to care for others. Too often, they are discouraged from reporting what happened, blamed for failing to “de-escalate” the situation, or left wondering whether speaking up could affect their job.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration acknowledges that many assaults and threats against healthcare workers go unreported. Without consistent reporting, the public cannot see the full scope of the problem, policymakers cannot respond using reliable information, and healthcare workers cannot meaningfully evaluate the safety of the places where they work.
I created Safe Staff after seeing how often healthcare workers’ experiences disappear into internal systems—or are never documented at all. Thousands of healthcare workers have since joined the platform, reinforcing what those of us on the front lines already know: violence in healthcare is not a collection of isolated incidents. It is a national workforce-safety crisis.
Congress has an opportunity to act.
The Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act—H.R. 2531 and S. 1232—would direct OSHA to establish an enforceable workplace-violence prevention standard for healthcare and social-service employers. Covered employers would be required to develop comprehensive, facility-specific prevention plans with meaningful worker participation.
We call on Congress to:
Pass H.R. 2531 and S. 1232 before the end of the 119th Congress.
Require healthcare and social-service employers to implement comprehensive, enforceable workplace-violence prevention plans.
Protect workers from retaliation when they report violence, threats, hazards, and near misses.
Establish standardized reporting requirements that allow incidents to be accurately tracked and compared.
Create meaningful public transparency through de-identified, facility-level workplace-violence data so workers, policymakers, researchers, and communities can understand where harm is occurring.
This is not about criminalizing patients experiencing medical, psychiatric, cognitive, or developmental crises. Prevention means designing safer environments, identifying hazards, providing adequate staffing and training, responding appropriately to warning signs, supporting workers after incidents, and learning from reliable data.
Healthcare workers should not have to be assaulted before their employers take safety seriously. They should not have to search social media or depend on whispered warnings to learn whether a workplace is dangerous. And they should never be expected to sacrifice their own safety to prove their commitment to caring for others.
Worker safety is patient safety.
Please sign this petition and call on Congress to pass H.R. 2531 and S. 1232—and ensure that healthcare workplace violence is prevented, documented, and brought out of the shadows.
105
The Issue
No Healthcare Worker Should Have to Accept Violence as “Part of the Job”
I am an emergency room nurse. Like countless healthcare workers, I have watched verbal threats, physical assaults, harassment, intimidation, and near misses become so common that many are never formally reported.
We are told that violence is simply part of working in healthcare.
It is not.
Healthcare workers are punched, kicked, bitten, threatened, stalked, sexually harassed, and injured while trying to care for others. Too often, they are discouraged from reporting what happened, blamed for failing to “de-escalate” the situation, or left wondering whether speaking up could affect their job.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration acknowledges that many assaults and threats against healthcare workers go unreported. Without consistent reporting, the public cannot see the full scope of the problem, policymakers cannot respond using reliable information, and healthcare workers cannot meaningfully evaluate the safety of the places where they work.
I created Safe Staff after seeing how often healthcare workers’ experiences disappear into internal systems—or are never documented at all. Thousands of healthcare workers have since joined the platform, reinforcing what those of us on the front lines already know: violence in healthcare is not a collection of isolated incidents. It is a national workforce-safety crisis.
Congress has an opportunity to act.
The Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act—H.R. 2531 and S. 1232—would direct OSHA to establish an enforceable workplace-violence prevention standard for healthcare and social-service employers. Covered employers would be required to develop comprehensive, facility-specific prevention plans with meaningful worker participation.
We call on Congress to:
Pass H.R. 2531 and S. 1232 before the end of the 119th Congress.
Require healthcare and social-service employers to implement comprehensive, enforceable workplace-violence prevention plans.
Protect workers from retaliation when they report violence, threats, hazards, and near misses.
Establish standardized reporting requirements that allow incidents to be accurately tracked and compared.
Create meaningful public transparency through de-identified, facility-level workplace-violence data so workers, policymakers, researchers, and communities can understand where harm is occurring.
This is not about criminalizing patients experiencing medical, psychiatric, cognitive, or developmental crises. Prevention means designing safer environments, identifying hazards, providing adequate staffing and training, responding appropriately to warning signs, supporting workers after incidents, and learning from reliable data.
Healthcare workers should not have to be assaulted before their employers take safety seriously. They should not have to search social media or depend on whispered warnings to learn whether a workplace is dangerous. And they should never be expected to sacrifice their own safety to prove their commitment to caring for others.
Worker safety is patient safety.
Please sign this petition and call on Congress to pass H.R. 2531 and S. 1232—and ensure that healthcare workplace violence is prevented, documented, and brought out of the shadows.
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Petition created on September 3, 2026