New polling shows that assaults on hospital staff are happening with alarming frequency and that workers in North Bay are more likely to be assaulted.

That from the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions after a poll was done in April 2016 locally and then nearly two-thousand members were surveyed in seven Ontario communities this fall.

The previous study showed that 86 per cent of health care workers in North Bay had experienced at least one incident of physical violence, compared to an average of 68 per cent in the other communities.

A comparison of the two polls shows that North Bay hospital staff are 18 per cent more likely to be assaulted, said OCHU president Michael Hurley at a North Bay media conference Wednesday. “When we released the original poll, we said that North Bay direct care staff were dealing with disproportionately higher rates of workplace violence. Now this new provincial polling shows that frequency is significant.”

Scott Sharp, a personal support worker who was thrown through a wall by a very disturbed patient at a Guelph hospital and is, over two years later struggling to recover and return to work, joined Hurley in North Bay to release the latest poll findings.

“The level of physical violence that I experienced and that so many other hospital staff experience every day, scars the body and it scars the soul. Not enough is being done by the hospitals to create a culture where violent behaviour is simply not tolerated. Instead, the victims of violence are, to a large extent, simply swept under the carpet,” says Sharp.

Among the many disturbing findings in the 2017 polling, is that, Ontario-wide, 42 per cent of nurses and personal support workers report having experienced at least one incident in the past year of sexual harassment or assault. However, the 2016 North Bay hospital staff poll showed a much higher rate of sexual harassment or assault of 53 per cent for the same direct care staff.

The union is asking the province to better protect hospital staff.

(Scott Sharp and Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions. Photo by Jeff Turl. BayToday.ca)