The worst of the COVID-19 pandemic may be over but many industries are still dealing with its continued impact on human behavior — especially healthcare.
An Aug. 2022 study conducted by the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) found in the last two years, 75% of its nurses had observed or experienced physical violence at work. Furthermore, 97% observed violence or harassment. An analysis of Press Ganey’s National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) showed more than 5,200 nursing personnel were assaulted — largely by patients — in the second quarter of 2022. This equates to two assaults per hour, 57 per day, and 1,739 per month.
“The peak that started to occur during the pandemic has remained high even though pandemic conditions have really started to abate,” Ontic’s Executive Director of Threat Management Dr. Marisa Randazzo told Campus Safety (6:28). “While healthwise we’re able to go out and about in the world and have been for a while, the residual impact of financial uncertainty, living and working and schooling at home, having to care for young kids who are unvaccinated or at risk, having to protect the health of elderly family members that we’re interacting with, having to worry about if you’ll still have a job — all of those things have had some residual impact on individuals.
“It [has translated] into less of an ability to be civil right each other: quicker tempers [and] more likelihood of interactions becoming combative and hostile. Whereas pre-pandemic, that same interaction might have been a disagreement but didn’t escalate into a shouting match and become a physical altercation. Our ability to tolerate things when we’re in conflict with someone else is pretty short-circuited right now for so many of us carrying that load from the pandemic. It isn’t the pandemic itself but the aftermath of having to live through that for as long as we have.”
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Amy Rock Editorial, LLC 