Abstract Introduction Workplace violence (WPV) against health care workers is a long-standing challenge that impacts the well-being of workers and patients. State legislative efforts to address WPV against health care workers have accelerated in recent years, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. Method This study conducted a review of WPV-related enacted laws in health care settings across all fifty states over the last 10 years. Results As of June 2024, 48 states had enacted at least one WPV law, and some states have enacted two or more laws. State laws were categorized into three types: Penalties, prevention, and remediation. Forty-five states had laws that penalize perpetrators of WPV, 27 enacted prevention laws, and 23 had remediation laws. Ten states had laws combining penalties with either prevention or remediation, 17 states had laws covering all three categories, while three states had only prevention and remediation laws Conclusion Understanding variation in state WPV laws is important to future efforts to evaluate the efficacy of different legislative approaches. This study provides a landscape for federal and state government to understand legislative trends, as well as can inform health systems on strategies that can be used to prevent and address WPV.
Lombardi et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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