Political Quotes

“On June 11 of this month, the House Education and Labor Committee reported out legislation, H.R. 1309, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Healthcare and Social Service Workers Act. Mr. Speaker, this is a culmination and a milestone of a 7-year process that began in 2013. Like many Members of Congress, I have been hearing about stories of rising violence in emergency rooms, ambulances, and treatment facilities to nurses, doctors, and nurses aides that showed a disturbing trend. One such case was Helene Andrews, a registered nurse from Danbury, Connecticut, who was assaulted multiple times during her career. Shortly before she retired, while she was dispensing medication to a patient, she was thrown to the floor and her pelvis was shattered. In 2013, former Congressman George Miller of California and I requested a report from the Government Accountability Office to dig deeper to determine how pervasive this violence is and what strategies are at our disposal to reverse this trend. The report, which was completed in 2016, found that workers in healthcare facilities experienced substantially higher rates of nonfatal injuries due to violence in the workplace compared to workers overall. Between 2006 and 2016, there was a 70 percent increase in violent incidents that occurred in healthcare and social service workplaces that resulted in employees being away from work.…”