AUSTIN, Texas — Texas nurses can breathe a sigh of relief after the passage of Senate Bill 240, which will protect health care personnel from workplace violence.
Officials from the Texas Nurses Association (TNA) said out of the average number of nurses in Texas, about half of them will be subjected to some sort of physical violence at one point in their career.
"That is an extremely high number. Another thing that I think helps put this in perspective is that there's some national research that shows that health care workers and nurses, in particular, are about four times more likely to be subjected to physical violence in the workplace than any other profession," said Jack Frazee, director of Government Affairs at the TNA.
Frazee said that the TNA has been trying to work on policies to reduce violence for about a decade.
SB 240 would provide nursing staff a more active role in the development of facility policies, anti-retaliation protections and more. It would require facilities to create a committee that will look at hospital policies and practices around workplace violence prevention and creates a plan for the facility to follow.
"It makes it clear that those are protected communications and employers cannot retaliate against folks for exercising those rights. Then on top of that, the state is advising and supervising all of these things. So if a facility for some reason is not following the law, then they could be subjected to penalties by the state," Frazee said.
Before the passage of this bill, hospitals were not required to have any type of workplace violence prevention program, plan or training.
During this legislative session, Mary Vitullo, the current director at large for the TNA, said there has been a lot of focus on nursing. Vitullo believes this is a result of nurses advocating for their own profession to protect themselves at work.
"We had [over] 400 nurses go to the Capitol building and spoke with their representatives and senators to let them know that workplace violence is a very real part of their job right now. We need to put protections and protect nurses," Vitullo said.
Officials said moving forward, this is going to help nurses feel safer and more comfortable at work and it's going to provide them with the protection they need.
"Because, right now, we're facing a pretty significant nursing shortage and we need to do everything that we can to promote eliminating things like burnout and promoting, you know, increasing resiliency for nurses," Vitullo said. "I think this bill is really going to help with that."
The TNA said it "applauds" State Rep. Donna Howard and State Sen. Donna Campbell for helping champion the bill.
SB 240 now heads to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk for a signature.