By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Mosaic Life Care officials say there has been a dramatic increase in violence against its caregivers, and it won’t be tolerated.
Mosaic CEO Mike Poore says the increase in violence the last couple of years has no discernable common thread.
“We’ve had random acts of violence in every department in the hospital,” Moore tells reporters during a news conference at the St. Joseph hospital. “It’s increasingly frustrating.”
Those acts vary, according to Mosaic Chief Nursing Officer Rebecca Bledsoe.
“Everything from verbal abuse, mental abuse, and to physical abuse,” Bledsoe says. “And it’s every scenario that you can imagine.”
While there appears to be no common thread or discernable trend to the violence, it does seem to be on the increase of late. Poore says assaults have spiked the last two years and seem to only be increasing.
“In the last several weeks, I’ve had a nurse punched in the face. I’ve had another caregiver who was grabbed by the hair and her face was slammed into a table,” Poore says, adding that a security guard suffered a broken knee cap responding to an assault.
“I’ve been in health care for 36 years. It’s just that we’ve seen it increase to a level that has not been seen in my career,” Poore says.
Mosaic showed a video of some of the acts of violence. We have that video below.
Both Bledsoe and Poore say Mosaic is encouraging nurses and others who are assaulted to report assaults to police. Both add caregivers are reluctant to report.
“Deep down in their heart they feel like it goes against what they are here to do and that’s just to provide care to patients,” Bledsoe explains. “But the other thing is, we are very busy in health care and there’s a lot of steps that goes into making sure we’re reporting. And so, it is another burden that we have to go through.”
Bledsoe says Mosaic is helping alleviate some of the burden of filing the paperwork to report workplace violence.
The St. Joseph Police Department pledges to investigate every report of workplace violence at Mosaic. Buchanan County Prosecutor Michelle Davidson urges anyone assaulted to file a report.
Mosaic has hospitals in St. Joseph, Maryville, and Albany with clinics throughout its 19-county region.