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Virginia has adopted a hospital workplace violence prevention law effective July 1, 2025. It requires hospitals to establish a workplace violence incident reporting system to allow hospitals to document, track, and analyze reported incidents of violence.
Hospitals must record all reported incidents of workplace violence and keep such records for at least two years. All employees must be notified of the system and trained on when and how to report incidents of violence. Each record should include, at a minimum:
- Date and time of the incident;
- Description of the incident including job title(s) of affected employee(s);
- Status of the perpetrator (patient, visitor, another employee, etc.);
- Where the incident occurred;
- Type of incident (e.g., physical attack with or without a weapon, threat of physical force, sexual assault, etc.);
- Response to and consequences of the incident, including whether security or law enforcement were involved.
Each hospital must report the data collected to the chief medical officer and the chief nursing officer on at least a quarterly basis. A report must also be sent annually to the commonwealth’s Department of Health.
Hospitals must adopt policies prohibiting discrimination or retaliation against employees for reporting workplace violence or for seeking assistance during an incident from the employer, security, law enforcement authorities, emergency services, etc.