Health-care workplaces need better enforcement to prevent violence: report

Two nurses and one physician injured on the job in an assault last Thursday at the nursing station in God's Lake Narrows. Two health care unions say they've been warning employers long enough about this kind of workplace violence. It may be a physical assault, but it definitely affects your psychological health and everything in your life when you've been assaulted. A report on the issue was commissioned by the Manitoba Nurses Union and Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals. Which represents allied health staff, including rural paramedics, therapists, and lab workers. The report says the number of workplace injuries from violence and assaults is on the rise. Between 2022 and 2025, injury claims increased by 41%. In 2025, one in five of all injury claims was due to violence. What we're saying at this point is, this has been going on long enough. There needs to be a fulsome approach to implementing a solution to this. Of the more than 1,200 injury claims for assault and violence across all sectors, 520 or 42 percent happened in health care workplaces. Center West Consulting's Sean Tucker is the report's author. He says stronger rules and more enforcement of current regulations are needed in these workplaces. People receive health care there, but there are workers there. For some reason, they have received a pass on enforcement. Private sector employers do not receive a pass, but health care places do in Canada, in Manitoba, and this needs to change. His recommendations include hiring 10 more safety and health officers to do inspections and more prosecutors to handle cases involving serious injury or death. Tucker also says places with high rates of violence, ERs and ambulances, should be designated high risk. Which would result in more oversight. A government spokesperson says while there are protections in place, they will carefully consider these recommendations. Josh Crabb, CBC News, Winnipeg.