FOCUS: Louisville healthcare workers face growing safety concerns

Right now Louisville’s nursing community is facing a crisis, saying they are under attack while on the job. 

Since March, police have been called to three different Louisville hospitals after a nurse was assaulted. 

But those are only the attacks that are reported, several nurses told WHAS11 they face dangerous situations daily without the necessary support.

During a shift-change around 7 a.m. on Saturday, April 12, dispatchers sent police to find a suspect running from Jewish Hospital in downtown Louisville. 

“The caller is advising a black female, wearing black clothing, heading west on Chestnut had stabbed a nurse getting off work,” a 911 dispatcher said over the scanner.

One month earlier, in March, another incident was reported at UofL Peace Hospital on Newburg Road. 

“They’re hurting us. Please send them. Please send them,” a nurse begged a 911 call taker while asking for police.

The nurses on the phone with 911 described a fight between patients. 

“Do you have staff out there?” the call taker asked.

“Yes. But there’s not enough of us… I’m not sure how many nurses are hurt,” a nurse replied. 

Hospital security did not allow officers to enter the hospital, leaving nurses to fight for themselves. 

Most recently, on the third floor of UofL Hospital in downtown Louisville, arrest records describe a terrifying attack.

According to the document, a nurse was choked, thrown to the ground, and hit. The patient later told police she was mad because “staff was taking too long to discharge her from the hospital.”

“We need actual consequences for these sorts of actions. Not feeling like filling out an incident report is time consuming, and nothing ever comes of it. That’s I mean, something should come, come of it,” a nurse told WHAS11. 

The three incidents of violence against nurses sit on a map of hundreds of crimes reported at or near Louisville hospitals and nearby parking garages over the last year. 

According to LMPD’s crime data portal, 17 assaults were reported at Norton Hospital, 10 at Jewish Hospital, and 28 at the UofL Hospital parking garage over the last 12 months. 

At Norton Audubon Hospital there were 10 assaults reported and east of that, at UofL Peace Hospital, 19 assaults have been reported since May 2024. In South Louisville at UofL Mary and Elizabeth, six assaults were reported to police in the last year.

All were recorded incidents involving law enforcement, but often what happens inside hospital walls isn’t reported. 

“Many healthcare professionals that are harmed don’t report it, and they don’t report it because they don’t think anybody will listen. And then there are others who think that it’s part of the job. It is not part of the job,” CEO of the Kentucky Nurses Association Delanor Manson said.

In 2023, Manson worked with lawmakers to formalize language requiring healthcare facilities to track incidents of violence and implement violence prevention strategies. 

“I mean, we were dancing on the tables. That was great, but there were some amendments to it that made it pretty ineffective,” she said.

It’s a crisis for the career field. Manson said she is already working to combat an expected shortage of 20,000 nurses in Kentucky over the next five years and workplace violence isn’t exactly helping recruitment.

“You’re going to lose a lot of your experience because a lot of your experienced nurses and staff are going to leave, because they’re going to get tired of it,” a nurse who identified herself as an employee with UofL Health said. 

WHAS11 put a call out on social media, asking healthcare workers if they feel safe on the job. 

Within 48 hours, we received more than 50 responses, most said no and explained why they don’t feel safe at work.

Four of those healthcare workers agreed to interview, but asked us not to share their name or show their face, out of fear they could lose their job.

One nurse, who said she works at UofL Hospital in downtown Louisville, explained what she called an ineffective training program offered by the hospital.

“They show you how to get out of a certain hold, if a patient grabs you a certain way, how to get out of it safely,” she said. “I’ve definitely never used any of those skills. By the time I need to use those skills. I mean, I’ve already been assaulted, so I definitely don’t have time to think about how to get into, like, a certain stance.”

Another nurse, who said he formerly worked for UofL Health, but now works at Norton West Louisville Hospital described losing his job after he said he intervened when a patient got violent.

“Two of my nurses went in to work with a patient to fulfill orders that had been given. I turned around, I heard them holler. I turned around and looked and one was backed into the corner. The other was holding an IV and trying to put the other hand up to stop the patient. They said he swung at us. Immediately, went in, told him he had to leave, because we have a zero tolerance for violence,” he described. 

The nurse said he was terminated after the incident, with the healthcare company claiming, “the physician did not see the patient beforehand, so we did not provide a medical screening.”

A healthcare worker who identified herself as a medical assistant with Baptist Health described a lack of safety, specifically outside of the hospital.

“It’s mostly when I’m going in on the weekends, because security is not as high as it should be on the weekends,” she said.

The nurses told WHAS11 security at certain facilities is better than at others. 

“I’m working in Norton, west Louisville now, and there’s police at the entrance. Security makes rounds every half hour to hour. I see security multiple times throughout my shift, and then everybody’s screened when they walk in at that hospital, they’ve really done a good job there,” a nurse who identified himself as a current employee at the hospital said. 

A nurse who said she works at UofL Hospital described signs within hospital walls that address the violence, and say it won’t be tolerated, but she said they don’t reflect the hospital’s response to violence. 

“I think it’s nice to show, but I don’t think that it’s true because, I mean, we do tolerate violence, for sure, we definitely tolerate it,” she said, pointing to her love for the career. “A nursing degree is one of the hardest degrees to obtain and when we become nurses, we take an oath to do no harm, and then we enter a profession where a lot is tolerated.” 

Manson fears young children who dream of being nurses or even nursing students could be discouraged from joining the career field, and that would be devastating blow. 

“They hear about these types of incidents and they’re not interested in joining a profession where they’re going to be harmed. If they were, they say we would be policemen or we would be firemen. We don’t want to help people and be harmed,” she said.

The 2023 law in Kentucky was created to require healthcare facilities and ownership groups to track violence and provide changes to prevent incidents from happening twice. It isn’t enforceable right now, Manson said. 

But some healthcare groups are beefing up security, including Hosparus Health.

“Our ultimate hope is that our care providers feel safe, feel more secure, know that they have options if they do feel unsafe. That gives them the peace of mind so they can provide the great care we know they can provide and not focus on the safety piece of it,” Melissa Merrifield with Hosparus Health said. 

Hosparus leadership recently invested in a technology called KATANA. It’s a personal safety device that attaches directly to a smart phone. It works both as a trigger alarm, if nurses pull the trigger attached to the device and it has an app option, that offers additional safety features. 

“You can put it on your phone, your name badge, your computer, wherever you want it. It actually has four ways to call for help, two silent ways and two loud alarm ways. If you alert, if you do an alert of any kind, they end up texting you. If you’re okay, if you don’t respond to the text, they will call you. And if you don’t respond to the call, then they will use the Location app to find where you are and send help, send the police,” Hosparus Health Team Nurse Donna Beld said. 

Hosparus Health has been testing the technology for the last several weeks with select nurses, before deploying it to the entire team later this month.

Beld said she loves the new app, “because even if I have a situation where I’m walking into something, or maybe I’m walking far, you know, maybe I have to park way down there and walk up, and it’s the middle of night, I can call them, and they’ll stay on the phone with me and make sure I get into the home safe, and make sure I get back to my car safely.”

It’s a unique approach, designed for home health nurses.  

Manson said hospitals are going to have to act to provide the same kind of support for their staff.

Now she’s working with lawmakers once again to get the needed reforms put on paper and passed. She said Kentucky Rep. Jason Nemes (R-Middletown) is supportive of her request and willing to help.

But she said they are going to need more than one lawmaker on their side, they are going to need you. 

“This is important to every Kentuckian to be able to have a nurse,” Manson said. “And if they quit, they decide they want to be in some other profession, then we will all suffer.”

WHAS11 reached out to the three major hospital groups in Louisville to ask for their response to the allegations of a unsafe work environment. They provided the following statements:

There are serious concerns about workplace violence in the healthcare industry. Baptist Health is committed to protecting the safety of our staff, patients and visitors. Providing high-quality care in a safe environment is our top priority. Baptist Health has been working closely with our frontline caregivers, and all of our hospital and physician practice employees, to identify and implement enhanced workplace safety measures. By listening to our employees, we have included advanced intervention training, security and response protocols, and collaboration with law enforcement partners to address the real needs and experiences of our workforce.

Any hospital stay can raise stress levels among patients and their family. The environment is unfamiliar and there are always understandable concerns about treatment and long-term prognosis. Sometimes that stress manifests into inappropriate interactions with health care staff, which is why we train regularly in de-escalation techniques and provide increased security, as needed.

UofL Health does not tolerate any violence, or threats against its team, which is there to help, provide quality care and save lives. Abuse of healthcare workers is unacceptable and is now a Class D felony in the state of Kentucky.

UofL Health has a zero-tolerance approach toward these incidents. We support the rights of our employees to file charges, and encourage them to do so, against patients or visitors that violate the law. UofL Health also provides additional support and expertise to help navigate the process.

Safety on our campuses is always a top priority for our staff, our patients and visitors. In addition to positioning our security team in high trafficked areas, escorts are also available for anyone upon request. Our security team is trained and equipped to handle many situations, but will, and has called law enforcement when warranted. 

Norton Healthcare prioritizes the health and safety of our employees and continues to look for new ways to provide a safe working environment. Since 2023, we have invested more than $40 million in security and safety across the organization.

Physical violence, emotional abuse, lewd and/or intimidating behavior toward health care employees is never acceptable, and Norton Healthcare does not tolerate it under any circumstance.

Our caregivers lead with compassion and empathy but we hold individuals — patients, visitors and staff alike — accountable for a safe, respectful and healing surrounding.

If any employee is threatened, assaulted or feels unsafe in the workplace, security staff responds to help de-escalate the situation and calls law enforcement when appropriate. If warranted, the suspect will be taken into custody.

When an incident is reported, our leaders take action to inform the patient or visitor of our zero-tolerance policy. We fully support and stand behind any employee who decides to press charges. Legal resources will be provided to assist employees who have chosen to pursue legal action. In severe cases, Norton Healthcare will dismiss a patient from future non-emergent services if they do not comply with our zero-tolerance policy.

Our Workplace Violence Prevention Team offers customized, healthcare-specific training programs focused on identifying early signs of agitation and de-escalating potential threats.

Short of the ability to develop our own private police force, these are some examples of the most efficient ways we have found to protect our employees.

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