On this month's cover, nurses at a California Division of Occupational Safety and Health board hearing show their support for workplace violence prevention legislation. In recent years, the state of California has implemented the country's strongest health care workplace violence prevention rules, which require employers to establish, execute, and annually review workplace violence prevention plans; log violent incidents; and train employees on recognizing and counteracting workplace violence hazards. (The California Nurses Association/National Nurses United sponsored and fought for the legislation.) And now the push to create safer workplaces has gone national: a federal bill modeled after California's legislation-HR 5223, the Health Care Workplace Violence Prevention Act-was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in March.
This issue features two articles that address the increasing problem of workplace violence in the health care setting. In "Workplace Violence Training Using Simulation," Brown and colleagues describe how their institution developed a program to train staff to handle potentially violent situations by simulating several threatening scenarios. Meanwhile, "Workplace Violence," written by nurse and attorney Edie Brous, details the specifics of workplace violence as it relates to nurses as well as the responsibilities of health care organizations in addressing it. Additionally, AJN editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy offers further insights on workplace violence in this month's Editorial.-Diane Szulecki, editor