Can AI Reduce Patient Violence Against Clinicians?
Modern Healthcare / By Gabriel Perna
Artificial intelligence is touted as a way to ease clinicians' workload. A hospital in Dallas is using it to keep them safe.
Parkland Memorial Hospital, the city's large safety-net hospital, is using AI to protect its doctors and nurses from violent patients. It joins a growing number of health systems deploying AI to tackle the pressing issue.
“We feel that workplace violence, particularly in healthcare, was an epidemic before the pandemic. But then with the pandemic, it just got even more pronounced,” said Steve Miff, CEO of Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation, the health system's research institute. “When you’re at the hospital, it’s one of most vulnerable times in your life. So, you can understand why it’s a setting that’s probably more primed for irrational behavior.”
A team from the research institute developed an predictive AI tool within its electronic health record to generate a risk assessment score that informs clinicians which patients are more likely to be violent.
The development of the AI tool comes as violence against doctors and nurses is on the rise. More than 80% of nurses said they experienced some form of workplace violence in 2022 and 2023, according to a February survey by National Nurses United. In a January survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians, 71% of emergency physicians said violence in the emergency department was worse in 2023 than in 2022.
The American Hospital Association has endorsed a bill that would make it a federal crime to attack healthcare workers in the process of doing their jobs.
Parkland has about 400 incidents per year that can include verbal threats, hair pulling, biting or hitting. Often, they are underreported by clinicians, Miff said.
“Just hearing the frontline staff stories is just heartbreaking because they're passionate about helping people and then they themselves become a victim,” Miff said…
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