Studies show workplace violence has been on the increase for a number of years now. In some industries in particular the incidents of workplaces violence have multiplied at alarming rates. The healthcare industry is one such industry where healthcare workers, nurses, attendants, are submitted to everything from verbal epithets to physical violence.
Now we have a new twist on workplace violence. Beheading. Following the gruesome beheading, in Oklahoma, it appears another employee wants to saw the heads off his fellow co-workers.
According to the New York Daily News…”An Oklahoma ISIS terrorist wannabe vowed to behead his co-worker because she was a Christian, police said — just a day after another Oklahoma man decapitated a colleague during a bloody rampage on his former workplace.
Police arrested 30-year-old Jacob Mugambi Muriithi Friday on a terrorism complaint. His co-worker at Bellevue Nursing Home told officers he threatened to behead her in the name of ISIS.”‘
So we have to start asking, just who are we hiring here in a nation with its fair share of societal problems? Besides past criminal, will background checks reveal more about these apparent nut jobs who permeate our national work force? That appears to be the case with Alton Nolen, who did have a criminal history. Or are these employees undetectable in the majority of cases? Worse, still, how many more incidents like this will we see, taking workplace violence to the extreme?
The bottom line is that healthcare workers really don’t need to subject themselves to this type of treatment, either from their patients who fellow employees. There comes a time when one too many incidents like this, or even on a lesser scale, cause our healthcare workers to dread coming to the job. If there is ultimately a reduction in people who want to enter the healthcare industry, the nation will suffer. As much of our population ages, this is one industry that needs to grow, accordingly. And not decline.