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Arizona state law requires health care employers to develop, implement, and maintain a written workplace violence prevention plan. The plan must:
- Identify components specifically tailored to the conditions and hazards of the health care employer’s sites and patient-specific risk factors.
- Identify the individual responsible for developing and overseeing the plan.
- Include a requirement to post signage in public areas of the health care employers’ sites, including emergency facilities, which provides notice that assault on health care workers may be prosecuted as a felony.
- Include methods for reporting, incident response, and post-incident investigation procedures, including procedures for:
- Health care workers to report workplace violence risks, hazards and incidents.
- Health care employers to respond to reports of workplace violence.
- Health care employers to perform a post-incident investigation and debriefing of all reported incidents of workplace violence with the participation of health care workers.
- Require employers to provide information to workers about workers’ ability to report any assault to law enforcement, and to help the worker in doing so if asked.
The workplace violence prevention plan must be made available at all times to all health care workers and contractors who provide patient care.
If a workplace violence incident is reported, employers must:
- Review the circumstances of the incident.
- Solicit input from workers and supervisors about the cause of the incident and any preventative measures that could have been taken.
- Document the findings, including corrective actions taken and recommendations for future actions.
Employers must also:
- Maintain records related to their workplace violence prevention plans, including identifying, evaluating and correcting hazards and risks and documenting training procedures.
- Maintain an incident log to record workplace violence incidents and records of incident investigations.
- Evaluate annually the implementation and effectiveness of the workplace violence prevention plan and document the findings.
Employers are prohibited from discriminating or retaliating against workers who:
- Report incidents of workplace violence.
- Request intervention from law enforcement or emergency services.
- Reasonably act in self-defense or defense of others in response to an imminent threat of physical harm.
- Exercise any other right under this law.
“Health care employer” means a health care institution that is licensed as a hospital, freestanding emergency services facility or urgent care facility and that has more than 50 employees. This law does not apply to the Arizona state hospital or any other licensed facility that is under the jurisdiction of the superintendent of the Arizona state hospital.