Healthcare Workers Face the Highest Rate of Workplace Violence in America
Healthcare and social assistance workers face a level of on-the-job violence unmatched by any other major American industry, according to a new report from DeMayo Law Offices, which found the sector recorded 55,980 serious violent workplace assaults in a single year, a rate of 17.1 incidents per 10,000 full-time equivalent workers. That figure is more than double the rate reported in the second most dangerous industry, educational services, and dwarfs the rates seen in retail, hospitality, and professional services.
The physical toll on healthcare workers is substantial and varied. Assault-related injuries in the industry included 16,440 cases involving sprains and strains, 12,070 involving bruises and contusions, 3,750 involving cuts and lacerations, and 1,350 resulting in fractures. Altogether, nearly 80% of all serious workplace assault cases nationwide occur within medical and custodial care settings, a concentration the report’s authors describe as a defining, if underdiscussed, feature of modern healthcare work.
The report paints a difficult picture for those entering the profession. Nurses working double shifts in understaffed psychiatric units, home health aides managing patients with behavioral conditions, emergency room technicians handling intake with little to no security infrastructure, and certified nursing assistants providing custodial care to physically aggressive patients in long-term facilities all face violence as a routine, rather than exceptional, part of the job. Healthcare training programs, the report notes, prepare students extensively for clinical emergencies and the emotional weight of patient care, but rarely for the day-to-day threat of physical assault.
Despite the scale of the risk, healthcare remains one of the only high-hazard industries in the country without a mandatory federal violence prevention standard. OSHA’s guidance for healthcare settings has been voluntary since 1996, and a long-anticipated binding healthcare-specific standard, expected to take effect in late 2024, was ultimately reclassified and shelved, leaving the nation’s most dangerous industry for workplace violence governed by non-binding recommendations.
Compounding the danger is a stark pay gap. In 2024, healthcare and social assistance workers, who suffered more workplace assaults than any other industry by a wide margin, earned a median annual wage of just $37,180, well below the national median of $49,500. By comparison, professional and business services workers, who recorded the lowest workplace violence rate in the report at just 0.4 cases per 10,000 full-time equivalent workers, earned a median annual wage of roughly $83,600, more than double what their highest-risk counterparts take home.
The consequences of that daily exposure are already visible in the workforce itself. The report found that 60% of healthcare workers reported experiencing depression and 81% reported burnout, with nearly two in five saying they had considered leaving their positions specifically because of workplace violence. Within a broader risk index built from the report’s data, healthcare and social assistance was the only industry to land in the “Critical” tier, scoring 9.5 out of 10, driven by its combination of the nation’s highest assault rate, its highest burnout rate, and one of its lowest median wages among the industries studied.
The report also notes that healthcare’s workforce is approximately 78% female, meaning the industry’s uniquely high violence rate also disproportionately shapes the occupational risk faced by women nationally. Enforcement resources available to address the problem remain thin regardless of industry: as of 2023, just 1,875 federal and state OSHA inspectors were tasked with overseeing roughly 11.5 million American workplaces, a ratio that translates to each site being inspected once every 186 years on average.
“Behind every workplace violence case is a real person: a nursing assistant struck by a patient, a home health aide managing a volatile situation alone, an ER technician with no security nearby,” said a spokesperson for DeMayo Law Offices. “These are workers asking for nothing more than the ability to do their jobs and get home safely at the end of a shift.”
The report’s authors argue that the combination of high violence exposure and comparatively low wages represents one of the more underreported inequities in the American labor market, leaving many of the workers most likely to be injured on the job least equipped financially to absorb the consequences.
