Charles F. McElwee

From inner cities to rural towns, American emergency rooms have become sites of social dysfunction. As Cleveland Clinic CEO Tom Mihaljevic told NPR, “there is a very fundamental problem in U.S. health-care that very few people speak about and that’s the violence against health-care workers. Daily—literally, daily—we are exposed to violent outbursts, in particular in emergency rooms.”

As doctors and nurses administer care, they risk physical assaults from drug-addicted or emotionally disturbed persons. This phenomenon, in part, is another reflection of the nation’s socioeconomic divide. While urgent-care centers manage cuts and broken bones in suburbia, ERs in some urban neighborhoods and declining communities must respond to drug abuse, homelessness, and antisocial behavior.

Studies attest to the problem’s severity. According to a 2018 survey from the American College of Emergency Physicians, nearly 47 percent of ER doctors reported physical assault at work, with 60 percent confirming attacks in the past year. The trade association’s research appeared alongside a study, published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, on violence in Michigan ERs, which found that 72 percent of that state’s emergency physicians had experienced violence during the previous year. The physicians felt “constantly fearful” of physical assault. “We’ve been concerned about that for many years,” a Cedar Rapids ER director told the Des Moines Register, adding, “there’s a sense that it’s progressively gotten worse.”

and more

https://www.city-journal.org/violence-in-americas-emergency-rooms