You have asked a lot of questions, and I'm sure all the people at the table want to talk to you about those issues, because they are fundamental to what's going on in health care.
I think we need to ask why the prevalence of violence is so widespread in the health care setting, where it far exceeds the level of violence that even police and corrections officers face. Why, in almost every statistic across the country, do we find that health care staff are suffering rates of violence far in excess of any other occupation?
You mentioned the issue of women, and I think it's fundamental here. This is an occupation in which women predominate, and violence against women in our society is a major issue. The way violence is treated in the health care setting is so reminiscent of how domestic violence is treated.
As our friends from British Columbia have said, health care workers are blamed. Most post-incident briefings, or debriefings, start off with, “How did you approach this person?” The onus is already on the health care person, as if their behaviour is the source of the problem.
This issue of why the public doesn't know about this has been brought up a number of times. I agree; the public does not know. One of the factors is the fear of reprisal that health care staff across the country fear and face.
In Ontario, a nurse spoke out at a conference on violence, didn't name her workplace and simply said that violence was a major issue. When she returned, she was fired. The union engaged for almost two years in an arbitration case, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars that finally brought this person back to work.
When we conducted our study, in every single community we went to, the session started with people saying, “Protect us. We don't want to be identified. We know about this incident of someone being fired. We are afraid of speaking out.” Again, this is very much paralleling the attributes, if you will, of violence against women in our society, and how it is treated.