Violence-related injuries in health care spike as enforcement flatlines: report

Two of Manitoba’s largest health-care unions are calling on the province to improve protections for workers and hold employers accountable after a 41 per cent increase in violence-related injury claims.

The Manitoba Nurses Union and the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals said positions with elevated rates of violence should be designated high-risk — the same as some manufacturing or construction jobs — to trigger more frequent inspections and enforcement by the provincial workplace safety and health branch.

“Employers have an obligation under Manitoba’s Workplace Safety and Health Act to take violence prevention seriously,” MAHCP president Jason Linklater said Thursday, after the unions released an interim report and seven recommendations.

“When they don’t, the Manitoba government has an obligation to hold them to account. As you can see from (the) report, that is not happening.”

The unions, which have more than 20,000 members combined, commissioned Sean Tucker, a consultant and University of Regina professor of occupational health and safety, to examine Workers Compensation Board statistics and the provincial enforcement records.

His 31-page report said violence is at a “crisis level” in Manitoba’s health-care system, resulting in serious physical and psychological injuries to workers.

A spokesperson said the NDP government will take the recommendations under “careful consideration as we continue to do what is necessary to strengthen workers’ safety.”

Linklater and MNU president Darlene Jackson said violence and threats prompted some of their members to change workplaces or professions.

“I think it’s absolutely shameful that we have to wait until a major incident happens, staff speak out and a facility is grey-listed to see a safe environment… not just for nurses, but for anyone there who gives or receives care,” Jackson said.

The report found that 520 accepted time-loss injury claims in health care were attributed to assaults and violent acts in 2025, up from 368 in 2022. They represent 18.4 per cent of all time-loss injuries within health care.

Across all employment sectors, health care accounted for 42 per cent of all accepted time-loss injury claims involving violence last year. Violence disproportionately affected workers who are women.

Tucker said WCB claims figures do not capture the full scope or impact because violence has become normalized in health care and incidents are, therefore, under-reported.

The figures do not include police investigations or criminal proceedings.

Of more than 7,000 workplace safety and health inspections by the provincial regulator, six per cent were in health care, compared with 32 per cent in construction, despite a high number of injury claims in health care, Tucker said.

He said a lack of enforcement at public health-care workplaces is a systemic issue across Canada.

“Private-sector employers do not receive a pass, but health-care employers do in Canada, in Manitoba, and this needs to change,” he said.

“The regulator is within government, and they’re being asked to regulate and hold health-care employers to the same standard that manufacturing and construction employers are held to.”

Of 209 administrative penalties issued in all sectors from 2013 to April 2026, the lone penalty to a health-care workplace was related to asbestos, Tucker said.

A public database showed zero prosecutions related to serious injuries or deaths caused by workplace violence between 2008 and April 2026, the report said.

The report lists seven recommendations:

• Designate health-care sub-sectors with high rates of violence as high risk and subject them to stronger enforcement. Linklater said hospital emergency room and mental-health facility staff, and paramedics are among those who face high rates of violence.

• Expand the definition of a serious incident to better recognize the physical and psychological harm caused by violence.

• Explicitly include workplace violence prevention requirements in the administrative penalty framework and scale penalties to employer size.

• Fund at least 10 additional permanent safety and health officer positions.

• Organize enforcement teams by sector expertise and consider a dedicated violence and harassment unit.

• Increase prosecution capacity and prioritize violence in health care.

• Make workplace violence a strategic enforcement priority and measure whether enforcement improves employer compliance.

The government spokesperson said existing protections include injuries that constitute a “serious incident” and specific obligations for employers, including violence protection policies, training and reporting to a oversight body when violent incidents happen.

The spokesperson said the province has hired 12 new safety and health officers, and increased inspections year-over-year.

The Opposition Tories called on the province to make facilities safer.

“Health-care workers and patients deserve to feel safe in hospitals and right now that’s just not happening under the NDP,” Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook said in a statement.

In February, MAHCP took the government to court for allegedly failing to ensure the safety and health of its members, including social workers and respiratory therapists.

The union has asked a court to instruct the province to enforce workplace safety and health rules at facilities operated by Shared Health.

Just last week, RCMP charged a 34-year-old woman with three counts of assault after two nurses and a doctor were injured at the nursing station in Gods Lake Narrows.

MNU members voted in favour of grey-listing four hospitals — Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface and Seven Oaks in Winnipeg, and Thompson’s hospital — owing to concerns about violence, staffing levels and other matters related to employee and patient safety.

The tactic deems the hospitals unsafe workplaces and discourages nurses from taking shifts at the facilities.

chris.kitching@winnipegfreepress.com