Gerald E. Harmon, MD
Immediate Past President
The AMA has advocated against the culture of violence in America, including domestic violence, gun violence, racism, police brutality, and xenophobia—and violence against physicians and health professionals is no exception. While not a new occurrence, the reported uptick in intimidation, threats and attacks toward people in the medical field has been on the rise for at least the last decade—and has become even more of an alarming phenomenon since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The recent neo-Nazi protest against leading anti-racist physicians at a Boston-area hospital is yet another sad chapter in the long history of threats and intimidation of health care workers for simply carrying out the duties of our profession.
The AMA is deeply concerned about this threatening behavior and how it has contributed to an increasingly hostile working environment across medicine, particularly for those on the front lines of our nation’s response to COVID-19.
Research confirms what our personal experiences have long told us. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that as many as 38% of those in our field suffer physical violence at some point in their careers, and many more are threatened with verbal aggression. Here in the U.S., injuries caused by violent attacks against medical professionals grew by 67% from 2011 to 2018—with health care workers five times more likely to experience workplace violence than workers in all other industries, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Yet another global study from 2020 found that health professionals were roughly 50% more likely than other community members to have been harassed, bullied or hurt as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.