Nursing Is One of the Most Dangerous Jobs in America: How Can We Change That?
When we fall ill, we rely upon medical care professionals for assistance, and this often means one or several nurses are involved in our care. Nurses hold our hands when we are weak and afraid. They often cry with us when they deliver unpleasant news, and frequently also share our elation when we begin to mend.
For all they do, nurses deserve more on-the-job protections. But nursing remains one of the most dangerous professions due to the risk of injury and, sadly, the risk of assault from patients and their family members. Let us examine what measures are in the works to protect those who care for us at our lowest moments and how we can do better.
Causes of On-the-Job Harm for Nurses
Due to the nature of the industry, nurses face higher risks of on-the-job injuries than those in the private sector. Out of every 100 nurses, more than eight will suffer a work-related injury each year.
One of the safety issues impacting nurses involves their scheduling. Nurses in hospital settings often work 12-hour shifts, many times working a combination of overnight shifts and others during the day. This leads many nurses to develop sleep deprivation issues. Even one night of missed sleep can lead to difficulty focusing, contributing to accidents, and working differing shifts creates issues maintaining solid sleep hygiene techniques.
Another workplace danger facing nurses is the threat of accidental needle sticks. Every year, approximately 384,000 accidental needle sticks occur in hospitals and doctor offices. These occur most often when nurses are feeling tired or pulling a double shift, and lack of staffing also plays a role.
Nurses work around dangerous medications and chemicals all day. Even radiation poses a risk, although nurses typically remain out of imaging areas. Many of the agents used to sterilize patient surfaces, for example, can prove toxic to humans in sufficient quantities, and researchers continue to investigate the hazards of daily exposure. Exposure to certain medications, such as nitroglycerin used to treat heart attacks, can cause migraine-like symptoms and hypotension (low blood pressure) in those not needing the drug.
Finally, one of the leading causes of workplace injuries requiring time off for nurses is back injuries. Even though nursing schools take care to instruct new nurses in proper patient lifting techniques, this training goes by the wayside if inadequate staffing levels require nurses to move heavy patients on their own. Given the epidemic of obesity in the U.S., it’s safe to say nurses today probably lift more than those in earlier generations, and the endless strain can cause serious, even disabling back injuries.
Growing Home Health Care Concerns
Many members of today’s aging population prefer to remain in their homes, creating a need for more nurses to enter the home health care field. This creates additional dangers for nurses as they need to enter the homes of complete strangers, often all alone.
While most patients are grateful for care, some who suffer dementia can injure home health care workers without meaning to do so. Additionally, midnight calls for aid in dangerous neighborhoods expose nurses to additional dangers. Nearly 10 percent of American seniors now live in poverty, and considering many of today’s generations cannot save sufficient money for retirement, the problem is likely to grow.
Assault Against Nurses Is a Growing Concern
Finally, it isn’t only seniors with dementia who vent their frustrations through physical assault against health care providers. Receiving a negative diagnosis creates enormous stress, and while uncommon, some do lash out physically. Additionally, nurses deal with patients who suffer addictions to drugs, alcohol and both. While under the influence, such patients can prove violent, especially if they’re seeking medications such as opiates the health care center refuses to issue.
Another issue spurring violence against nurses is poverty and lack of insurance coverage among patients. Even though the law prohibits hospitals, for example, from failing to perform basic emergency care techniques on uninsured patients, violations occur, and some facilities persist in turning patients lacking coverage away. It’s understandable that this leads to frustration, but it also increases assault risk.
Protecting Our Caregivers
On June 11 of this year, the House proposed HR 1309, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act. The Act requires health care facilities to establish plans for preventing workplace violence before it occurs. The Act requires swift implementation of such plans.
Still, a nursing shortage exists, especially across the south and west. Even though many nursing positions offer competitive pay and benefits, the dangers of the profession make some hesitant to enter it. Stricter regulations, such as requiring home health care nurses to wear emergency alert buttons and monitoring devices when visiting patients alone, could encourage more individuals to enter the profession.
Keeping Our Nurses Safe at Work
Everyone deserves a workplace free from unreasonable danger and threats of violence, especially those who care for us when we are at our weakest. By doing more to protect our nurses, we can encourage others to enter the profession and help make sure the U.S. population has the care it needs.
My family had some experience recently with a home-health-care nurse (long story short: father was in the hospital, when he came home, it was easier for him for someone to come out and check on the dressings than for him to go in to the doctor).
My parents missed a call from her because the number came up as “unavailable” (and no number) on caller ID. Usually “unavailable” means “scam” so they didn’t answer. Later on, when she was there next, my mom commented on that and she kind of sighed and said “I work with all types of people” (To contact a nurse, you have to go through the home-health agency, and they call them)
Also, my mom apologized for “dust on the floor” when the nurse had to get down to look at the wound on my dad’s leg and she laughed and said “Dust on the floor is nothing compared to some of the stuff I’ve seen” and she went on to – without breaching any privacies – list some of the stuff she had to deal with.
On the one hand, I guess I kinda knew that. On the other hand, I was kinda shocked. And that also made me stop contemplating, “Well, maybe if teaching college ever goes to crap, I retool as an LPN or similar nursing degree and do home health” because I’m not sure I’m made of stern enough stuff to deal with what home-health nurses apparently have to deal with.
One of the sadder things I remember my mom telling me, from an early hospital stay of my dad’s: one of the nurses quietly commented she liked working with him, because “you say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ and you don’t yell at me”Report
While I was working for the state legislature I had a summer interim project to prepare a report on why one of the state’s mental health institutes had a much higher rate of on-the-job injuries than the others. It was an old building, with a number of additions scabbed on, and there were dozens of “hiding” places where inmates whose meds were out of whack could lurk and jump the nurses. The state was effectively paying hazard bonuses to keep nurses on staff.Report
Whenever we discuss healthcare policy, my first intuition is to look at it like a market. “Price is a function of the rate of increase of supply vs. the rate of increase of demand” and whatnot. After hammering on this for a while, I usually get to the point where I come to the question of “will this policy make it harder to be a medical professional?”
If the answer is “yes”, then the policy will make the whole Health Care Crisis worse. If the answer is “no”, a follow-up question is “will it make it easier?” and the answer to that is usually also a “no”.
This law, interestingly enough, looks like it’s going to make it easier to be a nurse.
Which is good.
That might actually help a little with the Health Care Crisis.Report