MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – The increase in violence against health care workers in recent years is also happening behind closed doors. Vermont’s hospice and home health care workers say they’re facing sexual violence, threats, and assault. Now, Vermont lawmakers are considering a bill to provide further protections.
“Home health nurses go into homes, unknown homes, by themselves all the time. So, we really need to be able to protect them,” said Jill Mazza Olson with the Vermont Visiting Nurse Association.
Mazza says current regulations for the designation and operation of home health agencies require visiting nurses to return to the homes of patients even when they’ve been proven to be unsafe. “We’re talking about weapons and we’re talking about people being chased in their cars by family members,” Olson said.
She says instances of physical and sexual assault toward caregivers have been reported and that VNA is asking for flexibility to reassess and reject patients that have already been ruled to be dangerous through a provisional change in an already established law. “It’s rare, but it’s serious when it happens,” Olson said.
Senator Ginny Lyons, D, Chittenden County, is the sponsor of a bill to address the safety protections. She says during a health care worker shortage, it’s important to safeguard the providers we have. “It’s become a workforce issue for us. We can’t afford to lose any more workers in any of our health care related industries,” she said.
Lyons says Vermont’s aging population will only exacerbate the need for more hospice and home health care workers and that if measures aren’t taken, both the workforce — and the state’s senior population — could be threatened. “Long-term care is invisible because people are at home, and we do age independently and alone,” she said.
There are still questions about how the legislation will impact dementia and Alzheimer’s patients, who can at times become disoriented and violent. Lyons says this is an ongoing problem but believes the bill is part of the solution.
The House Committee on Health Care will hear testimony from workers in the field on Thursday.