Violence toward health care workers: an emerging occupational hazard.

1. Violence toward health care workers has only recently been addressed as an occupational health hazard and research in this area is in its infancy. 2. Violent incidents are severely underreported and when studied are usually limited to formal incident reports. 3. Identified environmental risk factors for assaults include staffing patterns, time of day, and containment activities. 4. Health care institutions need to be educated that they have much to gain from efforts to identify and reduce the current epidemic of violence in these settings.