In 2014, a small hospital in Maplewood, Minnesota made headlines. The country watched as a patient, sixty-eight-year-old Vietnam veteran, Charles Elliot Logan, took a metal pole to staff sitting at the nursing station. In a video released by the Maplewood Police Department, the patient is seen beating staff members with the metal object as they frantically tried to escape. Logan, admitted for “altered mental status,” was experiencing paranoia, and was known to nursing staff to be confused and delirious. Two nurses received injuries, including a collapsed lung and a fractured wrist. Logan died shortly after the incident while in police custody.

Five years later, a similar story overtook hospital break rooms everywhere. In the spring of 2019, Jessie Guillory, a patient at Baton Rouge General Hospital, incited an altercation with a staff member at a nurse’s station. He then charged at a nurse, pinning her in a corner as he swung at her. A second nurse, Lynne Truxillo, intervened, pulling Guillory away from her co-worker. Turning his attention to Truxillo, he grabbed her by the neck, driving her head into a desk. In her attempt to escape from Guillory, Truxillo suffered injuries to her leg. After sustaining injuries, Truxillo finished her shift with abrasions to the back of her neck and a torn ligament in her knee. In a tragic ending, Truxillo died a few days later from bilateral pulmonary thromboembolisms as a result of blood clots forming in her leg due to her traumatic knee injury. Guillory was arrested and charged with manslaughter.

The stories mentioned above are, of course, extreme examples of aggression and violence against nurses and other hospital staff. More commonly, healthcare staff are yelled at, threatened, bitten, urinated on, or struck by patients or visitors. A 2014 study found that 54% of nurses surveyed had experienced verbal violence by a patient in the past year, and 30% had experienced physical violence. When asked to think back over their careers, only 22% of surveyed nurses, 66% of whom had over ten years of experience, had not experienced physical violence while working as a nurse. Over a quarter of nurses surveyed had experienced physical violence more than ten times.

After the incident in Maplewood, the conversation surrounding violence against healthcare workers in Minnesota surged. As a result, the Minnesota Nursing Association (MNA) increased efforts to pass state legislation aimed at preventing violence against healthcare workers and minimizing the impact when violent events occur. In 2015, the Violence Against Healthcare Workers Act was passed. This legislation is a foundation for reducing the current state of violence against healthcare workers. However, changes to enforcement and more comprehensive language are required to make a lasting and significant impact.

This paper focuses on the frequency of violence against healthcare workers, the public policy and administrative systems that impact violence against healthcare workers, and how these mechanisms can be improved to better protect Minnesota’s healthcare workers and patients. Part I of the article provides a preliminary overview of the current data regarding violence against healthcare workers in the U.S. and the impact this violence has on workers and the industry. In Part II, current policies for violence against healthcare workers and mechanisms for holding facilities accountable in Minnesota are discussed, establishing the framework for Part III, which argues what changes must happen in order to ensure the protection of healthcare workers statewide. The conclusion offers final thoughts on policy surrounding violence against healthcare workers generally.