Wisconsin already has a law that makes battery against certain health care workers a felony, though a bill moving through its legislature would extend that penalty to anyone threatening violence to a health care worker – similar to laws covering police officers and other government workers, according to Kaiser. In some states like Utah, lawmakers currently are considering legislation that would enhance penalties for assaulting health care workers, Kaiser Health News reported. The gunman in Tulsa targeted an orthopedic surgeon who operated on his back, blaming him for persistent back pain, authorities said. Shooting attacks in health settings are usually purposeful and targeted, unlike other types of mass shootings where the attacker doesn't personally know the victims, research shows. "The frequency with which physicians are injured or killed in acute care hospital shootings has more than tripled during the past two decades," Maine Medical Center researchers wrote in a study they published in April. Researchers have found that the risk of assaults is higher for health care workers than for people in other workplaces, and their risk to become gun violence victims is rising. 'WE'RE IN A PARALYSIS': There have already been a dozen mass shootings this year And that's just one of at least six deadly assaults in medical buildings that have happened in Texas, California, New Jersey, Minnesota and elsewhere in the past three years. On the same day as the Tulsa shooting, a county jail inmate receiving treatment at a Miami Valley, Ohio, hospital stole a security guard's gun, killed the guard and escaped before fatally shooting himself. ![]() ![]() "Countless acts of assault, battery, aggression, and threats of violence that routinely take place in health care settings demonstrate a frightening trend of increasing violence faced by health care workers throughout the country," the study says. "The risk of workplace violence is a serious occupational hazard for nurses and other health care workers," a recent study by National Nurses United found. ![]() In another hospital attack on Friday, a man stabbed a doctor and two nurses at Encino Hospital Medical Center's emergency department in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles and barricaded himself inside. The man remained inside a room in the hospital for about four hours as SWAT team members tried to unsuccessfully to negotiate with him before he was finally arrested, police said. This week's shooting that left four people dead at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical center is an all-too-familiar scenario for health care workers across the nation, who face assaults and even bullets on the job, according to studies and police reports of at least a dozen shootings across the U.S. It's a medical nightmare: When the bullets fly not outside on the street but in the doctor's office or the hospital itself. Watch Video: Tulsa shooter targeted doctor over ongoing pain, according to police
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