Workplace violence

In short

Patients, residents, and families can threaten or assault the people who care for them. Psychiatric hospitals, nursing and residential care, emergency departments, and home visits are repeatedly identified by OSHA and NIOSH as higher-risk settings. A CDC survey found that reports of harassment among health workers more than doubled from 2018 to 2022.

What the official numbers show

In 2024, private psychiatric and substance-abuse hospitals had a total recordable rate of 6.9 cases per 100 full-time workers, and private skilled nursing facilities had a rate of 6.3. State-government nursing and residential care stood at 8.3. Those are overall injury and illness rates, not violence-only rates.

BLS also publishes event-or-exposure tables on a two-year cycle. The 2023–2024 occupation and event workbooks were released with the January 22, 2026 SOII, but this site does not invent a violence-only rate from unpublished cells. When we add a violence-specific rate, it will be transcribed from those official tables.

For historical context only, an OSHA health-care page cites 2010 BLS figures: about 11,370 assaults by persons among health care and social assistance workers, including about 2,130 in nursing and residential care. That is a 2010 count, not a 2024 rate.

The CDC Quality of Worklife analysis published in Vital Signs found that 13% of health workers reported harassment in 2022, up from 6% in 2018. Harassment in that survey is broader than a recordable assault.

Source: BLS SOII Table 1, 2024; OSHA Healthcare Workplace Violence page citing BLS 2010; CDC Vital Signs, “Health Workers Face a Mental Health Crisis,” updated October 24, 2023.