Patients who enter a hospital or healthcare facility expect to be safe and experience quality care from compassionate healthcare professionals. However, patient safety is at risk if healthcare workers don’t feel safe, supported, and empowered in their workplace. For healthcare organizations to thrive in today’s competitive environment, employee safety is not just a priority—it’s essential for retaining top talent and ensuring high-quality patient care.
A strong safety culture fosters engagement, reduces burnout, and improves retention. By focusing on safety, healthcare leaders can differentiate their organizations as top workplaces, attracting the best talent in an increasingly competitive field.
However, organizations that don’t prioritize employee safety have experienced and will continue to experience staffing shortages. Workplace violence in healthcare is proving to be a significant contributor to these shortages. Leaders can use workplace safety to distinguish their organization from the many others who may soon be competing for a shrinking workforce.
Healthcare Shortages: By the Numbers
Major health organizations, including the American Hospital Association, have noted the current and predicted impact of nursing shortages on the healthcare industry. Some vital statistics to keep in mind when assessing the issue include:
- The number of nurses resigning rose from 400,000 per month in 2020 to 600,000 per month in 2023, according to a McKinsey and Company report.
- The same report anticipated a shortage of 200,000 to 450,000 registered nurses by 2025.
- The overall shortfall of healthcare workers could increase to 3.6 million by 2026, according to the AHA.
- A 23.8% turnover rate for first-year nurses, a 2024 NSI National Healthcare Retention Report found.
- The average cost of turnover for a bedside RN is $56,300.
The National Health Workforce Analysis (NHWA) has projected that:
- Nursing shortages of full-time RNs will continue until 2036, reaching as high as 10% in 2026 and 2031.
- By 2036, the nursing shortage will reach a deficit of 337,970 full-time registered nurses, with non-metro areas being hit hardest.
- Through 2036, a shortage of 139,940 physicians and shortfalls in the tens of thousands in other disciplines such as mental health, dentistry, and women’s health are predicted to occur.
These figures highlight the continued need for a robust safety culture in healthcare organizations. As nurses and other health workers continue to exit the industry, causing staffing shortages and workforce challenges, it’s critical to take a closer look at the current state of healthcare, how violence against healthcare workers is contributing to this trend, and what can be done to mitigate it.
Workplace Violence Impacts Staff Burnout
Violence in healthcare jeopardizes the safety of healthcare workers, contributing to high turnover rates. Nurses, caregivers, and others in patient care settings frequently find themselves a target of physical and/or psychological abuse from patients, their families, and even co-workers. These experiences exacerbate employee stress and erode their job satisfaction. The constant exposure to these high-stress scenarios can trigger many mental health issues, including depression and burnout.
The World Health Organization defines burnout as the feeling of exhaustion and mental distance or negative feelings toward one’s job, which decreases efficacy and ultimately causes providers to disengage and potentially leave their position.
A recent survey published by National Nurses United found that in 2023, 37% of nurses considered leaving the profession due to workplace violence, and 19% percent left their jobs due to workplace violence.
Burnout leads to lower job satisfaction, and for those in high-risk work environments, such as nurses, burnout can reduce productivity and hinder patient care. A 2023 study on retention strategies within healthcare stated that “multiple studies have found an association between nurse staff turnover and patient outcomes such as patient health, length of stay of hospitalized patients, and quality of care.” This further depicts workplace violence in healthcare as a critical concern and contributor to retention issues. Yet this risk can be minimized by better addressing safety concerns and implementing more effective safety measures in healthcare settings.
Workplace Safety: A Critical Intervention in Healthcare Worker Burnout
Worker safety is critical to ensuring nurses and other providers feel supported and able to meet their patients’ needs. While legislative measures are emerging to address safety, healthcare leaders can take immediate steps to create a safer environment.
- Establish clear reporting procedures and zero-tolerance policies that allow staff to feel comfortable and supported when reporting safety concerns without fear of retaliation.
- Conduct regularly scheduled safety audits based on reliable incident data.
- Asses if there is technology in place to facilitate scheduled safety audits, including visitor management and emergency weather protocol.
By implementing these immediate steps, healthcare leaders improve the safety and well-being of their staff and create a work environment where employees feel valued and protected. A commitment to workplace safety fosters a positive cycle: a safer work environment boosts morale, retention, and engagement, elevating the overall patient experience.
Safety Measures to Reduce Workplace Violence in Nursing
Healthcare leaders can support staff by implementing critical safety measures, reducing the risk of violence, burnout, and workforce shortages, and improving patient care.
Administrative Support
A major reason nurses leave the profession is a lack of administrative support when they feel overburdened or unsafe in their day-to-day work environment. Administrators and other key decision-makers can take steps to improve support for their staff, such as providing regularly scheduled safety training, analyzing nursing staff workloads, distributing to other team members when possible to ease nurses’ workloads, and facilitating more efficient collaboration between different skill sets within your workforce.
Administrators should also facilitate a safer working environment by making it easier to report violence and developing clear protocols for all staff to address violence enacted against them. This will help prevent underreporting and provide a full-scope view of what safety looks like for their specific facility.
Prioritizing Safety
An effective safety strategy begins with open staff communication and ensuring everyone’s voice is heard. In addition to clear and accessible safety protocols, safety measures should account for workers’ mental health and well-being. Bullying and harassment should not be tolerated, and a caring, supportive, and collaborative work environment should be encouraged. This can be accomplished by implementing regular feedback sessions where staff can discuss their safety concerns, providing accessible mental health resources and care for employees, and establishing a zero-tolerance policy for workplace violence and harassment of any form.
Empowering Your People
Providing staff with the tools to request immediate help in dangerous situations is crucial in empowering healthcare workers to take control of their safety. For example, wearable duress buttons allow employees to discreetly request help when facing potential violence. Healthcare systems can also provide regular de-escalation training to equip staff with the skills to manage tense situations before they escalate.
Coordinated support between departments ensures that when help is needed, it arrives rapidly and efficiently, reinforcing a strong sense of safety and teamwork throughout the organization. Empowering staff with these resources fosters confidence, reduces stress, and ultimately enhances patient care.
CENTEGIX: Supporting Staff Through Safety
When you need to protect staff from workplace violence, every second matters®. CENTEGIX helps you support your workers by providing innovative solutions to integrate into your layered safety plan. By adding an innovative foundation to your safety plan, you can deliver a comprehensive culture of safety that retains and attracts top talent.
CrisisAlert™ is a wearable duress button that allows team members to instantly request help from responders when faced with a potentially violent or dangerous situation.
- A staff alert immediately lets administrators and responders know that a staff member needs help, mapping their precise location so they can act quickly.
- A campus-wide alert indicates a potential wide-scale threat and can automatically send an alert to 911 dispatch through CrisisAlert’s customizable PSAP integration.
The CrisisAlert wearable duress button gives healthcare providers peace of mind in any patient care setting, letting them de-escalate potentially violent situations discreetly and immediately.
CENTEGIX is dedicated to our mission of innovating safety solutions to empower and protect people (every day). In an emergency, time is the most critical factor for a positive outcome. CrisisAlert, a wearable staff duress badge, enables staff to discreetly summon help in an emergency, so they can focus on what matters most: delivering high-quality patient care.
CrisisAlert is just one component of a comprehensive Safety Platform™. Leveraging the CrisisAlert solution, dynamic digital mapping, real-time locating capabilities, and visitor management, the CENTEGIX Safety Platform can help your organization plan for and respond faster to any safety situation, anywhere on your campus.
Explore how CENTEGIX Safety Platform can impact safety in healthcare here.
