Doctors and nurses are punched, choked, even shot. States want to stop that

Stateline – Wednesday, October 1, 2025
By Anna Claire Vollers

One morning earlier this year, as Deb Capistrano came on duty for her shift as a nurse in her hospital’s stroke unit, her colleagues from the night shift warned her that one of her patients for the day was a man who’d been threatening to harm them.

Capistrano has been a registered nurse for 17 years. Threats of violence aren’t new to her. Across the nation, hospitals have become some of the most violent workplaces in America, where health care workers experience workplace violence at triple the rate of all other private industries combined, federal statistics show.

For Capistrano, the worry that she could be hurt while doing her job is always in the back of her mind.

But in California, where she works, robust state law requires hospitals to create detailed violence prevention plans specific to the needs of each hospital unit, with input from frontline workers like nurses.

When Capistrano arrived on duty, nursing management already had a plan to keep her safe. For example, every time Capistrano entered the patient’s room she had an escort, and hospital security did their rounds more frequently on her unit.

“In that moment, I felt really safe,” she told Stateline. “There were a lot of different things in place that day to prevent any harm. I think that’s largely due to having that law in place.”

Health care workers such as Capistrano make up just 10% of the American workforce but experience 48% of the nonfatal injuries from workplace violence, according to federal data.

And the threat is increasing. The number of health care providers who reported harassment at work from patients, patients’ families and colleagues more than doubled between 2018 and 2022, according to the latest data available from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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