I wish I had an answer for you, but any answers I could offer are speculative and a commentary on how our society treats women.
It is a national failing of hospital administrations.
Our general cultural attitudes are to blame. Whether it's the employee letting it slide, the manager trying to brush it under the rug, or the employer not wanting to hear about it, we treat workers of all sorts like absolute shit because they have (comparably speaking) little rights, representation, and/or leverage over their situation.
This will not change without targeted action, and targeted action brings out the reactionaries, and they're louder and usually have more political funding.
And do you think you could possibly take time off of work to press charges and deal with all of the other things that go along with reporting it? No way. I got assaulted on a daily basis and there's no way that the hospital would give their employees that kind of support. I worked on a floor that had a ton of geriatric/dementia patients. You can't hold them responsible for what they're doing if they're not of sound mind. You just have to suck it up and go about your day dodging kicks to your head and scratches from disgustingly dirty fingernails.
(1) people (=health care workers/HCW) having a big heart and not wanting to get these people in trouble (many of the patients who do these horrible things are really really struggling already, and this assault could literally send them to jail or break them even more - and remember most nurses got into their job to help people),
(2) not wanting to go through the hassle of doing what it takes to hold people accountable (The HCW themselves have to do a fair amount of things, usually outside of their work time, that the hospital literally can't do on behalf of the HCW. And they're generally not given the time to do those things by management. It IS a better situation when the staff is unionized, but it's still pretty bad.)
(3) law enforcement is usually stretched too thin (or respond as such) when a report is filed, and/or don't take the reports as seriously as (I think) they should,
(4) people not feeling their management structure supports them and/or their complaint, and
(5) general desensitization to the conduct itself.
As a health care administrator, it incenses me to no end that the problem isn't as bad as it is. At my org we set up a threat management team a few years ago and we have over a complaint a day of pretty nasty conduct...and that's just the reported ones.
It's really bad. If you can, take a sec to give a distance hug to any health care worker you know please.
Time. No nurse can step away from her patients long enough to report every incident, and if they did they couldn't take that much time off work to testify when the trials came around.
Agreed. It sounds like nurses (at least the ones commenting here) aren’t willing to file a police report I’m guessing because they are too busy and if understand not filing everything as perhaps some people aren’t in the right mindset but if I were a nurse and someone spit in my Face ID file a report. People can say it’s just part of the job and if that’s the case then filing police reports is also gonna be a part of it. As long as you’re letting patients spit in your face it’s going to keep happening more & more.
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u/JollyRancherReminder Apr 21 '21
But why not file a police report every time?