黑料吃瓜网 health care workers are demanding better protections following the death of visiting nurse Joyce Grayson at a halfway house last year.
The nurses met with acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su at the Nursing Lab at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich Friday, to offer input on federal legislation designed to protect health care workers from workplace violence.
The number of health care workers nationwide who reported experiencing threats and harassment by patients or others at the workplace between 2018 and 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Despite that increase, there are currently against workplace violence. But Su said that鈥檚 going to change.
鈥淲e have started that process,鈥� she said. 鈥淥SHA standards require several steps, and we've gone through the first one.鈥�
Meanwhile, proposed by Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney from 黑料吃瓜网 seeks to more quickly protect health care workers.
鈥淚t would just accelerate the rulemaking process,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nybody who has looked at the pace of rulemaking, particularly for OSHA, it takes years to get it through.鈥�
Courtney said when the AIDS crisis struck, Congress passed a law to accelerate the OSHA rulemaking process to protect health care workers against blood-borne pathogens.
But more still needs to be done for workers in the health care industry, he said.
Courtney鈥檚 bill had bipartisan support with close to 250 votes in the House last Congress, but it failed to make it through the Senate.
鈥淵ou cannot get discouraged,鈥� Courtney said. 鈥淚t's too important to the people who go to work every day, and in terms of, frankly, having a sustainable health care workforce in our country.鈥�
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook projects home health and personal care aides jobs to grow 34% from 2019 to 2029.
But workplace security is a cost-add-on for health care employers, and there is pushback.
鈥淥ne of the things I like to think about when we get a lot of pushback about the costs of doing the right thing, are the costs of doing nothing, right?鈥� Su said. 鈥淲hat's the cost if we don't act? And so we want to make sure that we're doing the right thing, and also very much aware of what happens when we don't do enough.鈥�
Sherri Dayton, of AFT 黑料吃瓜网, is an emergency room nurse at Backus Hospital. She requested lawmakers consider drafting legislation to stop weapons from coming into health care facilities.
鈥淲e get that there are [cost] barriers, but they're the ones that we're willing to take to keep people safe on airplanes,鈥� Dayton said. 鈥淲hy are we not willing to take them to keep people safe in hospitals?鈥�
Funding education for health care providers is also important, Dayton said.
鈥淲e deal with people who have mental illnesses, and diagnosis that sometimes is difficult to deal with, and we deal with people on their worst days,鈥� she said. 鈥淣ot everybody just instinctively knows how to deal with those people. Every health care professional needs the training.鈥�
