Vermont Governor Phil Scott signed a bill into law last week aimed at mitigating hospital workplace violence.
Sponsored by Rep. Mari Cordes, House Bill 259 requires Vermont hospitals to create security plans and establish a team to advise on plan development, Becker’s Hospital Review reports. The development team must include healthcare workers who provide direct patient care and law enforcement personnel. Each hospital must also designate an employee trained in trauma-informed care and victim support to serve as a law enforcement liaison.
Hospital security plans must be developed based on a security risk assessment completed in consultation with the hospital’s medical and nursing department directors. The bill offers hospitals a framework for conducting the risk assessments and to help identify the best strategies to prevent violence based on patient volume, community crime, and law enforcement availability. Hospitals must also implement workplace violence incident reporting systems.
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Betsy Hassan, director of nursing education at UVM Medical Center, helped write the text of the legislation. She told NBC News that while the legislation is largely based on regulations from other states and federal agencies, each hospital has its own specific needs and available resources.
“An organization could implement some of the things that we have [at UVM], like security buttons. So, if a staff person is alone in a room or in a situation where they’re not comfortable, they can press that and it will send a team to the room,” Hassan said. “But again, it needs to be based on the individual risk of the organization and what works best for them.”
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The measure is in response to an uptick in assaults on nurses and hospital staff in recent years. A report released last year by Press Ganey found reported assaults against nurses increased 5% across the United States in 2023. The rate of reported assaults climbed from 2.59 per 100 nursing personnel in 2022 to 2.71 in 2023, amounting to nearly 17,000 assaults — a record high. Most reported events occurred in psychiatric units, followed by the emergency department, adult, pediatric, and perioperative units.
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Cordes, who is also a progressive care nurse at UVM Medical Center, says Vermont has the highest rate of healthcare workers being transferred or leaving their job due to workplace violence. According to the 2025 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, in 2024, the national hospital turnover rate for all employees was 18.3% while the turnover rate for registered nurses was 16.4%.
“I’ve been a nurse for six years. I’ve certainly seen it gradually increasing,” said Amanda Young, who is UVM Medical Center’s workplace violence and de-escalation coordinator. “And then since COVID, it’s like a rocket ship to the moon.”
