Addressing Workplace Violence

ONL holds a longstanding commitment to helping nurse leaders build and sustain healthy work environments, and ensuring nurses' well-being and safe and healthy work environments remains the top priority for nurse leaders across our region and the country. Together with our members and partners, we are working to address workplace violence both in practice and in policy. Our approach includes facilitating opportunities for ongoing learning and dialogue, sharing resources for addressing workplace violence from our members and allies in this work, and supporting our members in influencing organizational policy and state and federal legislation that improves the safety of healthcare workers.

Advancing Workplace Violence Policy Across Our Member States

Across our member states, state legislatures are seeking to address workplace violence in a variety of bills, and the same is true at the federal level. While the proposed legislation varies in each instance, common themes include an intent to raise public awareness about the prevalence and impact of workplace violence in healthcare, to allocate resources to address the complex problem, and to increase accountability and penalties for people who threaten or harm healthcare workers. ONL continues to work alongside our members whose advocacy and influence are shaping these policies across the region and the country.

Advancing Workplace Violence Legislation in Massachusetts and Vermont

ONL continues to work alongside our members whose advocacy and influence are shaping legislation addressing workplace violence in health care and healthy work environments. We are proud to share progress from Massachusetts and Vermont. 

In Massachusetts, multiple attempts in to pass workplace violence legislation in the past decade have been unsuccessful, but the start of the new legislative session brings hope. The Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association, Massachusetts Nurses Association and 1199 SEIU, the state's largest health care unions, have aligned in support of H.2655/S.1718: An Act Requiring Health Care Employees to Develop & Implement Programs to Prevent Workplace Violence. This bill takes important steps to address the security risks that health care employees face by developing and monitoring new statewide standards for evaluating, addressing, and reporting these risks, while ensuring inclusivity of health equity considerations and the needs of patients and/or visitors who are in crisis. Given the broad base of support and urgency of the issue, supporting organizations— including ONL—are optimistic about the bill's future.

In Vermont, nurses have been leading continued efforts to address workplace violence in hospitals. A nursing coalition, inclusive of American Nurses Association - Vermont, the Vermont Emergency Nurses Association, and the Vermont Nurse Practitioners Association, developed H.259: An Act Relating to Preventing Workplace Violence in Hospitals, with nurse legislator Representative Mari Cordes, RN. The bill requires hospitals to establish workplace violence prevention programs inclusive of a committee with direct care staff representation, risk assessments and training plans for de-escalation and trauma-informed care, a staff liaison through the event and legal process, data reporting and monitoring, and an exemption for facility improvements from the certificate of need process. Signed by the Governor in April, the legislation took effect July 1, 2025.

 Resources for Addressing Workplace Violence