Good afternoon, committee members.
First, we want to thank you for this invitation and to tell you we feel it is extremely important for us to be involved in this study as you are addressing an essential issue for the 76,000 members of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec.
My name is Linda Lapointe, and I am Vice-President of the FIQ and responsible for the occupational health a safety sector. We represent more than 90% of nurses, nursing assistants, respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists in Quebec. Ninety per cent of our members are women, and they experience various forms of violence on a daily basis.
With me today is Laurier Ouellet, President of the Syndicat des professionnelles en soins de Chaudière-Appalaches. That union is affiliated with the FIQ and represents 3,500 nurses, nursing assistants and respiratory therapists in the region.
Health care professionals experience various forms of violence: physical, psychological, sexual and organizational. That violence may be active or passive, direct or indirect. We know that psychological violence is seven times more likely to occur than physical violence.
Specific information on health professionals is hard to come by because the available data cover all personnel in the social affairs sector. Consequently, it is difficult to form a clear picture of violence cases in the health care sector, particularly in long-term care facilities and in home care. In addition, as a result of underreporting—we'll come back to that later—the figures we're giving you today are merely the tip of the iceberg.
According to the statistics provided by the Commission des normes, de l'équité, de la santé et de la sécurité au travail, the CNESST, on violence, stress and harassment in the workplace, there was a 27% increase in accepted injury cases during the period from 2014 to 2017. Of those cases, 32% were attributable to physical violence and 12% to psychological violence. There was also an overall 11% increase in sexual and psychological harassment cases. Lastly, it was observed that women were involved in a large percentage of of those violence cases. For 2017 alone, the victims of 73% of injuries attributable to physical violence and 68% of those attributable to psychological violence were women.
The health sector alone accounts for 61% of accepted injury cases attributable to physical violence, although health personnel represent only 10% of the staff of all institutions covered by the commission. The number of accepted claims for injuries caused by violence in the workplace rose by nearly 25% between 2015 and 2017.
The consequences of violence are extremely serious and cause considerable pain and distress in the lives of health care professionals. Mr. Ouellet will explain this to you in greater detail.