As part of the annual Los Angeles Workers’ Memorial Week of Action focusing on workplace safety and health, 121RN member nurses, patient advocates and community members held a “Safe Workers Save Lives” rally in near College Hospital Cerritos to highlight the violence that healthcare workers face on the job. The event was also to support Cal/OSHA’s pending workplace violence prevention regulation for healthcare workers.
“I am a new grad and I have seen many incidences (of violence) in a short time,” said Tinu Abraham, a Registered Nurse who works in the Youth Services unit at College Hospital Cerritos. “When a worker is injured here, they don’t get any benefits or leave. They just send them to urgent care and tell them to come back to work the next day. I just want to raise my voice against this.”
Violence against nurses and healthcare workers at College Hospital in Cerritos and throughout the healthcare industry is widespread. More than 70 percent of all workplace assaults occur in healthcare and social service settings. Nurse and healthcare providers working in mental hospitals are routinely threatened, spat on, bitten, punched and stabbed.
There are currently no federal or state regulations around the occupational hazard of workplace violence. The California Safe Care Standard campaign – _s_pearheaded and primarily funded by SEIU Local 121RN and the SEIU Nurse Alliance of California – petitioned Cal/OSHA last year to develop the country’s first comprehensive regulation around workplace violence prevention for healthcare workers. The regulation is now in the formal rulemaking process and Cal/OSHA anticipates that it will be in place by July 2016.
Sherice Smith, an RN in Obstetrics at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, said management only gives workers the bare minimum when it comes to protection from workplace violence.
“It’s not a ‘code black’ as the hospital calls it. It’s a patient swinging an IV pole at us,” Smith said. “Don’t be afraid to stand up in that yearly safety meeting and say, ‘give us more protection.’ Don’t be silent. It’s ok to have a voice.”
Jorge Cabrera, Coordinator for the Southern California Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, said our journey toward violence-free workplaces doesn’t begin or end with the regulation that Cal/OSHA hopes put into play in 2016.
“When we go to work, we didn’t sign up for a shift of getting beaten up,” Cabrera said. “Our coming together against workplace violence doesn’t end until we are free of violence at our workplaces.”
SEIU 121RN President Gayle Batiste, an Operating Room registered nurse at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, wrapped up the sentiment of the day: “We have to say this is not ok. It has to stop. It has to stop now. We want to go home safe at night and we will keep going till all workers get protection.”