While 2020 has been a stressful year for nearly all charged with keeping campuses safe, many would agree that the healthcare industry has faced the most challenges.
Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a strain on healthcare facility resources as employees tirelessly continue to care for patients while trying to restrict the spread of the virus. That is why for this year’s roundup of the most popular content among Campus Safety’s healthcare readers, it is no surprise that lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic made up a significant chunk of the top stories, including those related to patient surges, emergency department challenges, and shortages of both personal protective equipment (PPE) and staff, just to name a few.
In addition to fighting against the pandemic, healthcare workers are continuously dealing with increased workplace violence, a mental health crisis among nurses, and compassion fatigue — the latter of which has increased for many due to the significant loss of life during the pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 300,000 Americans have died.
According to the latest IAHSS hospital crime survey, in 2019, Type 2 assaults (patient-on-staff and visitor-on-staff incidents) jumped 25% and aggravated assaults more than doubled compared to the previous year. Violence has continued to be an issue during the pandemic, particularly at the beginning, when there were significant visitor limitations put in place and emergency departments were completely overwhelmed.
Additionally, those working in the healthcare and social services industry are four times more likely to suffer an injury due to workplace-related violence than all other industries combined. Because of this, many healthcare facilities are struggling to retain strong security employees. Add a global pandemic into the mix and it is no surprise that our article about how to keep your best security employees made this year’s most-read articles.
There is no doubt 2020 has been a difficult year. However, with the first phase of vaccination distribution underway, we are hopeful that 2021 will look a lot different and that our healthcare workers can return to some semblance of “business as usual” in the near future.
Check out this article’s slideshow to see all of this year’s top healthcare stories.
