On an October morning in 2024, three emergency department nurses ran toward a gunshot victim without hesitation.
It was just after 4am when an SUV pulled up to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia. One of the passengers had been shot. The nurses moved quickly to provide lifesaving care. In the seconds that followed, they became victims of violence, too.
The driver of the vehicle attempted to flee, striking and running over all three nurses and the injured man in the process. More than a year later, the scars, both visible and unseen, remain for those who lived through that day, their loved ones and colleagues, and the community beyond.
The courts and Congress have spent years debating whether healthcare professionals like these deserve federal protection when violence finds them at work.
The driveway attack could be dismissed as extraordinary, a tragic convergence of bad luck. But this event was not an anomaly. Healthcare staff are five times more likely to suffer violence on the job than employees in other industries.
By any measure, Penn Presbyterian is widely regarded as one of the more secure Level 1 trauma centers in Philadelphia, and across the health system, Penn Medicine employees benefit from the institution’s substantial investments in de-escalation training, wearable duress technology, and weapon detection systems — measures that exceed those found in many other workplaces. If violence can find the cracks there, it can find them anywhere.
And it has. Stories of violence are disturbingly common: verbal altercations that turn threatening; patients or visitors who spit, shove, kick, or punch; and care providers left injured or shaken. These incidents happen at high-volume trauma centers and community hospitals alike, from emergency departments and inpatient units to hallways and waiting rooms.
Healthcare staff are five times more likely to suffer violence on the job than employees in other industries.
In acute-care settings, the harm is as pervasive as it is corrosive. According to the American Nurses Association, one in four nurses has been physically assaulted at work, and Press Ganey data shows that, on average, two nurses are assaulted every hour in the United States. The problem is growing.
An analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data found a 30 percent increase in workplace violence across medical facilities over the past decade. On paper, assaulting a healthcare worker is a felony in Pennsylvania. In practice, laws and consequences are enforced unevenly. Many in the medical profession are hesitant to press charges. They’ve been told, explicitly or implicitly, that this is just part of the job.
This can and must be addressed by Congress.
The bipartisan Save Healthcare Workers Act would make it a federal crime to knowingly and intentionally assault healthcare staff, extending to these workers the same legal protections now afforded to commercial airline flight crews. The bill would also provide $25 million in grants to train providers and strengthen safety measures at their facilities.
Accountability must extend to every corner of the country’s healthcare system. Hospitals and health organizations have a responsibility to invest in the safety of their employees. But institutions cannot do what federal law can by drawing a line states alone have been unable to hold, setting consequences, and signaling that the people who care for us have a right to protection.
The toll on the medical profession is a national emergency. When cases do not result in meaningful consequences and enforcement varies by jurisdiction, protections become inconsistent in practice. It creates unsafe environments and makes it harder to recruit and sustain the skilled professionals on whom we all depend. Underscoring growing concerns about the well-being and retention of the U.S. healthcare workforce, a 2024 national nursing study found that nearly four in 10 nurses plan to leave the profession within the next five years.
The Save Healthcare Workers Act has 61 bipartisan House cosponsors. Healthcare staff show up every day ready to protect and care for others. They deserve the same certainty in return.
This is why we — a hospital CEO responsible for the safety of thousands of dedicated employees and a member of Congress responsible for the laws that protect healthcare professionals — are writing together. We see this issue from different vantage points, but we arrive at the same conclusion: Violence against healthcare workers is not inevitable, and it is not acceptable. It demands both institutional commitment and federal action. The experiences on the ground are clear, and so is the need for consistent, enforceable protections that only Congress can provide.
Now is the time to translate that consensus into action and deliver the protections healthcare professionals earn every day.
Kevin B. Mahoney is the CEO of Penn Medicine. Madeleine Dean is the U.S. Representative for the 4th District of Pennsylvania.
The Citizen welcomes guest commentary from community members who represent that it is their own work and their own opinion based on true facts that they know firsthand.
PROTECTING OUR WORKERS
