The state’s largest hospital system is implementing a brand new code of conduct that goals to guard its employees from threats and harassment, together with racist feedback, by sufferers and guests.
Mass Common Brigham stated it gained’t permit offensive remarks about race, accent, faith, gender, sexual orientation or different private traits. This contains refusing to see a clinician based mostly on private traits.
In a message to sufferers this week, the well being system additionally stated it will not permit sexual or vulgar language, or bodily assaults.
Mass Common Brigham spokesman Mark Murphy stated the code of conduct was developed over the previous yr in response to the nationwide rise in violence and hostile conduct at well being care amenities. The group launched a sweeping anti-racism initiative in 2020.
“Simply as we attempt to supply the very best medical care and expertise potential, Mass Common Brigham goals to be a protected, welcoming atmosphere for each our sufferers and our employees,” Murphy stated in an e mail.
The coverage states that sufferers who violate the code of conduct could also be requested “to make different plans for his or her care.”
Threats and violence in opposition to well being care employees nationwide escalated in the course of the COVID pandemic, in line with hospital officers, well being care employees and authorities knowledge.
In a 2022 survey by the labor union Nationwide Nurses United, practically half of nurses reported that office violence is rising.
Massachusetts nurses reported a pointy uptick in violence from 2021 to 2022. And 38% of nurses surveyed by the Massachusetts Nurses Affiliation earlier this yr stated considerations about violence and abuse might impression their selections to depart nursing sooner.
Workers at Mass Common Brigham have been the goal of threats and violence prior to now. Earlier this yr, a gaggle of white supremacists protested outdoors Brigham and Ladies’s Hospital. In 2015, a gunman shot and killed a Brigham cardiac surgeon, Dr. Michael Davidson.
Leaders of the Mass. Nurses Affiliation, which represents unionized nurses, stated they help Mass Common Brigham’s new coverage — however need hospitals and state lawmakers to do extra by approving laws to strengthen protections for well being care employees.
“With healthcare violence rising in the course of the pandemic, it’s extra necessary than ever that employers improve their insurance policies in collaboration with nurses and different caregivers,” union president Katie Murphy stated in written a press release. “We should additionally acknowledge that sufferers and healthcare employees are below large stress created by a system that too typically values income on the expense of native companies, protected staffing and high quality care.”
