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May 5, 2025
According to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, healthcare professionals are five times more likely to experience workplace violence than workers in any other industry.
Effective July 1, 2025, hospitals in Virginia will be required to put in place a workplace violence incident reporting system, which must document, track, and analyze incidents of workplace violence, as well as maintain records of incidents for at least two years.
“Workplace violence” is defined as any act of violence or threat of violence, without regard to the intent of the perpetrator, against a hospital employee while on the hospital premises and engaged in the performance of their duties. It includes the threat or use of physical force that results in, or has a high likelihood of resulting in, injury, psychological trauma, or stress, and any incident involving the threat of using dangerous weapons or using common objects as weapons or to cause physical harm. Physical injury need not be sustained.
Hospitals must communicate the reporting system to all employees and include guidelines on when and how to report workplace violence to the employer, security agencies, and law enforcement authorities. Additionally, the statute directs hospitals to adopt a policy prohibiting discrimination or retaliation against hospital employees for reporting, or seeking assistance or intervention in connection with, workplace violence.
The law requires hospitals to use the results of their analysis of the data collected to make improvements in the prevention of workplace violence, including improvements through continuing education in the areas of de-escalation training, risk identification, and violence prevention.
Hospitals must report the data collected to the chief medical officer and chief nursing officer on a quarterly basis, at a minimum, and send a report to the Department of Health on an annual basis that includes, at a minimum, the number of incidents of workplace violence reported.
Legal counsel can assist with implementing a reporting system that complies with the recent changes in the law.
The author of this article, Karen Edginton Milner, is a member of the Bars of Louisiana and Pennsylvania. This article is designed to provide one perspective regarding recent legal developments, and is not intended to serve as legal advice in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Virginia, or any other jurisdiction, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship with any reader of the article where one does not exist. Always consult an attorney with specific legal issues.
