New Law Requires Virginia Healthcare Employers to Track and Report Workplace Violence Against Nurses

 

If you’re a nurse in Virginia, then you know how common workplace violence is in healthcare. Sometimes the physical attacks are intentional, coming from upset family members. Other times, patients with uncontrolled mental illness attack the very nurses there to help them.

 

Fortunately, two identical bills passed by the Virginia General Assembly this year will help us understand just how frequent violence against nurses is.

 

This article breaks down House Bill 2269 and Senate Bill 162, both of which Governor Glenn Younkin signed into law in March 2025. These bills amend Section 31.1-127 of the Code of Virginia. With these amendments, every hospital in the Commonwealth must establish a workplace violence incident reporting system.

 

Let’s examine these new requirements. I hope that these changes improve the way that healthcare employers prevent violence against nurses.

 

If you have questions after reading this article, call me at (804) 251-1620 or complete this form. My law firm, Corey Pollard Law, has represented hundreds of injured nurses in Virginia workers’ compensation cases for years, and we want to help you.

 

Workplace Violence Against Nurses is a Serious Problem

 

The statistics for workplace violence against nurses are grim. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 13% of days of work missed by employees in the health care and social assistance sectors resulted from violence.

 

Surveys of health care workers bear this out. For example, National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest union of registered nurses, conducted a study in 2023 that found that eight in ten nurses had experienced workplace violence within the past year.

 

Unfortunately, real-world examples are prevalent close to home in Virginia. For instance, in December 2023, a man checking himself in for mental health treatment at HCA Chippenham Hospital in Chesterfield County, right near the border with the City of Richmond, shot a Chesterfield Police Officer and a hospital patient in the emergency department.

 

What Do We Mean by Workplace Violence Against Nurses?

 

Virginia Code Section 32.1-127 defines workplace violence against nurses and other health care workers as:

 

• • The threat or use of physical force against the employee that results in, or has a likelihood of resulting in, bodily injury, psychological trauma, or stress, regardless of whether physical harm occurs.

• • Any incident involving the threat of using dangerous weapons or objects to cause physical harm, regardless of whether the healthcare worker suffers bodily injury.

 

Types of Workplace Violence that Nurses Face

 

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) classifies workplace violence into four categories:

 

1. 1. Criminal intent: The perpetrator has no relationship to the hospital or the nurse and usually commits the violent crime along with another crime, such as robbery. For example, the perpetrator may attack the nurse while stealing opioids.  
   2. Client-on-worker: This type of workplace violence is the most common type that nurses experience. An example is when a patient is having an anxiety attack or suffering hallucinations and attacks the nurse, believing it is someone else or that they are in danger.
   3. Employee-on-employee: Healthcare settings are tense. Lives hang in the balance. So, it’s natural for tempers to flare and lead to worker-on-worker violence at hospitals.
   4. Personal relationship: The perpetrator has a problem with the nurse outside of work and shows up in the healthcare setting to attack the nurse.

 

Under Virginia’s new law, a nurse is the victim of violence regardless of the perpetrator’s intent if the act of violence occurs while you are on the hospital’s premises and performing your regular job duties.

 

What Does This New Law Require of Virginia Hospitals?

 

Virginia Code Section 32.1-127 requires hospitals to:

 

Create a Workplace Violence Incident Report System

 

Every Virginia hospital must have a system that records information for each reported incident of workplace violence.  

 

For each incident, the system should record:

 

• • The date and time it occurred
  • What happened (i.e., the violent act)
  • The names and job titles of the affected employees
  • Whether the person committing the violent act was a patient, visitor, co-worker, supervisor, or other person
  • Where in the hospital did the violent incident occur
  • The exact threat made (use of physical force, sexual assault, etc.) or the act performed
  • Whether law enforcement or hospital security received notice of the violent incident and responded
  • The consequences of the incident
  • Whether the incident resulted in the hospital changing safety policies
  • The name, job title, and contact information of the person who completed the report
  • The date of completion of the report

 

Tell Employees About the Workplace Violence Incident Reporting System

 

The reporting system won’t lead to the necessary changes if it lacks data.

 

To address this potential issue, the new law requires hospitals to communicate the reporting system to all employees, including new hires during their orientation, and to inform employees about the procedures for reporting workplace violence to the employer, security guards, and local law enforcement.

 

These requirements should address one of the problems reported in the NNU’s study: only about 1 in 3 nurses said that their employer gave a clear way to report incidents of violence.

 

Use the Data to Prevent Workplace Violence

 

The law requires each hospital to analyze every incident of workplace violence reported, and to use this analysis to improve workplace violence prevention efforts.

 

Specific types of improvements are listed. These measures include de-escalation training, violence prevention planning, and threat and risk identification.

 

Provide Workplace Violence Data to the Department of Health

 

Each hospital must send a report to the Virginia Department of Health annually that includes the number of workplace violence incidents reported by an employee.

 

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About this New Law

 

How Long Do Hospitals Have to Keep this Data?

 

Hospitals must keep the record of a specific workplace violence incident for at least two years.

 

Does this Law Apply Only to Hospitals?

 

No.

 

Although Code Section 32.1-127 primarily refers to hospitals, the definition of hospitals is more expansive than most people think.

 

Virginia Code Section 32.1-123 defines a hospital as any licensed facility whose primary functions involve diagnosing, treating, and providing medical and nursing services (surgical or nonsurgical) for two or more nonrelated persons. Under this definition, hospitals, children’s hospitals, psychiatric wards, and most, if not all, inpatient and outpatient medical providers must comply with the workplace violence reporting requirements.

 

Do Hospitals Have to Track Workplace Violence Against Non-Nurse Employees?

 

Yes.

 

An employee includes any employee of the hospital or any health care provider credentialed by the hospital or working on site to perform health care services.

 

How This New Law Helps You and Other Injured Nurses and Health Care Employees

 

This new law requiring increased reporting, tracking, and analysis of workplace violence in healthcare helps you in four ways.

 

First, the tracking and analysis of the data should result in safety measures that lower the risk that you become a victim of workplace violence.

 

Second, if your healthcare employer (HCA, Riverside Healthcare, Bon Secours, Sentara Health, Carilion, Inova, etc.) denies your workers’ compensation claim based on violence and argues the attack did not arise from an employment-related risk, you can use the data to show that nurses are at an increased risk of suffering from violence. This data should help you overcome that defense.

 

Third, if alleging hospital negligence in a workplace violence case under tort law, you can use this data to show that the hospital knew it had a problem but failed to take the proper precautions to protect you and other people in the hospital from violence.

 

Fourth, healthcare employers must adopt policies that prohibit discrimination or retaliation against any employee who reports workplace violence. Having represented many nurses in Virginia, I know that fear of losing the job sometimes leads to a delay in reporting such incidents. I hope this prohibition and the increased focus on stopping hospital violence eliminates the fear of employer retaliation and expectation that nurses should simply “deal” with violence, and encourages employees to report threats sooner.

 

Are You a Survivor of Hospital Violence? Get Help Now.

 

Virginia has now joined twelve other states with similar workplace violence reporting laws.

 

This law is a step in the right direction, forcing healthcare employers to take concrete steps to document, analyze, and fix violence in hospitals.

 

If you’ve been injured by workplace violence at any Virginia healthcare facility, this new law could significantly impact your workers’ compensation case or personal injury lawsuit because it provides new ways to hold employers accountable.