PULSE Magazine | November/December 2018 Issue

of those were death by animal however the statis- tics I viewed didn't detail what the nature of those animal incidences were...but I'm curious! Falls, slips, trips were a close third with 849 incidences but you get the point. Remember these are just the fatalities for 2016. These do not include inju- ries. According to statistics kept by OSHA, the Federal Occupational Health and Safety Admin- istration, serious workplace violence was more common in health care than any other private sec- tor industry. EMS workers are little different. The NAEMT found that four in five EMS workers have experienced some kind of on the job injury with the majority, 52%, coming from assault. The problem of violence against EMS personnel is not only widely underreported but it is overlooked by EMS executives, researchers, and educators as well as practitioners. Our profession is not like that of Law Enforcement and Fire Service where they highly promote a culture and training geared specifically to personal survival. In EMS we are patient safety centric and the vast majority of our training goes specifically towards patient care and other operational considerations. And, honestly the problem of violence towards medical providers while slowly escalating over the years was rarely addressed by anyone in the profession because of the stigma involved. Much like PTSD reporting in the field of health care, admitting there's a prob- lem by providers and administrators alike has his- torically been slow in coming. The ATCEMS system is a rare one in that our cadets receive training in defensive tactics while in the academy. That's actually very progressive compared to the rest of the country in regards to our profession. Recently some of us here in ATCEMS have been working towards making train- ing available to our employees who want to learn self defense and how to better control a combative patient. DEFENSIVE TACTICS

especially in Emergency Rooms are the front lines of medicine in our society and while these groups bare the greatest amount by percentage, violence towards Doctors, Nurses, and Technician type jobs such as Xray, Respiratory, and many others also have their fair share of both physical and or verbal abuse from patients and family members. VIOLENCE IS THE SECOND LEADING CAUSE OF INJURIES FOR MEDICAL PERSONNEL In a study published 2017 by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Fatal Occupational Injuries by Major Event For Medical Personnel for 2016 showed that violence was the second leading cause. Transportation being first with 2083 deaths. Violence was 866 incidences. Oddly, some

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