Over the past two years, violence in the healthcare workplace is increasing, according to a study published in Medcape.
Here are five things to know about healthcare workplace injuries:
1. The healthcare and social assistance sectors made up 20.7 percent of the private industry nonfatal occupational injuries for all sectors.
2. There were 10,680 OSHA-recordable injuries from Jan. 1, 2012 to Sept. 30, 2014 at 112 facilities in the United State that were included in the study. The break down is:
• 4,674 patient handling and movement injuries
• 3,972 slips, trips and falls
• 2,034 workplace violence injuries
3. More than half of the injuries involved nurses and nursing assistants, and they experienced the highest rates of patient handling and workplace violence injuries. Among the patient-handling injury reports, 62 percent include lifting equipment, and of those 82 percent occurred while lifting equipment that wasn't used.
4. Non-patient-care staff had high slip, trip and fall injuries.
5. Physicians, dentists and interns had the lowest injury rates.