Public Health Scene

Half of all nonfatal injuries resulting from workplace assaults occur in health care and social service settings, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nurses and other personal care workers are at most at risk — suffering workplace injuries at 12 times the rate of the overall private sector.

One of the largest studies on the issue was a 2004 survey of 6,300 randomly selected nurses in Minnesota, in which 13 percent of respondents reported having been physically attacked during the previous year and 39 percent reported having been threatened, verbally abused or sexually harassed.

“Nurses find different kinds of responses from their administrations and different levels of support,” said lead researcher Susan Gerberich, a University of Minnesota professor of environmental health sciences. “Everything from ‘This is not tolerated at our institution’ all the way to ‘If you don’t like it, people, you can leave your job.’”

More from North Carolina's Blue Ridge Now (This article originally appeared in the New York Times)