End Nurse Abuse
- Becky Blair-Stevenson
- Oct 25, 2022
- 2 min read
Contact your representatives to create awareness of the abuse in the nursing world. #EndNurseAbuse
Attached is the template to send to your Senate and House representative. Please take a minute to personalize it with your representatives' name, the state you are from, and your name and credentials on the signature line. I have also provided the links to find your states Senate and House representatives, which will link you to their site/emails. Please send this to both your Senate and House representatives. In larger states, like California, it may take a minute to find your representative due to so many districts in the State, but a quick google search will tell you what district you live in. This should take no more than 5-10 minutes in totality and is a very simple step all of us can take to #EndNurseAbuse. Remember, small steps make big changes. Please reach out to me if you have any questions.
Link to House Representatives:
Link to Senate Representatives:
Template: (Can be downloaded in Word format by clicking the button below)
Dear _________,
My name is ________ and I am a Registered Nurse in the great state of __________. In the past week, three nurses have been murdered while performing their professional duties. These nurses were serving their communities in North Carolina and Texas. These are the most recent attacks against healthcare providers in our country. In a study by the American Nurses Association, nurses are at a greater risk of violent attacks than prison guards and police officers. Annually, nurses experience violent attacks at a rate of 13.2/100 nurses. It is estimated that only 20%-60% of these attacks are reported. This under-reported epidemic has devastating implications for the profession and for all patients. Violence against nurses results in diminished quality of care and care outcomes for patients, leads to psychological trauma, and adds to the alarming rates of nurses leaving the bedside. It is estimated that 500,000 nurses will leave the bedside before the end of the year.
OSHA guidelines are not sufficient to protect the profession. In 2016, OSHA published Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence. These are merely suggestions that request healthcare employers to voluntarily implement practices that prevent violence against healthcare workers. OSHA does not have the authority to hold healthcare employers accountable for implementing these guidelines, and with a federal budgetary allocation of $4.37 per American worker, that is an unrealistic expectation of OSHA.
However, there is a realistic expectation that Congress can take to protect the healthcare “heroes” of this nation. HR 1195 Workplace Violence Prevention for Heath Care and Social Service Workers Act is a comprehensive bill that would require that healthcare facilities implement a comprehensive plan to protect all healthcare workers, require OSHA reporting, and prevent retaliation against employees. HR1195 has the potential to protect the 4.3 million nurses in the US. This bill passed the House in April, 2021 and has been, subsequently, stalled in the Senate HELP committee since that time. Please urge your colleagues in Congress to take swift and necessary action to get this bill to the Senate floor for a vote prior to the end of this Congressional session. The profession and every patient in our country cannot afford to lose anymore nurses to violence.
Thank you,
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