Nurses demand action after Methodist Dallas hospital killings

A shooter killed two hospital employees at Methodist Dallas Medical Center on Saturday morning. Jacqueline Ama Pokuaa, 45, was one of the two women shot to death around 11 a.m. at the Dallas hospital by a man on parole who received permission to be there for the delivery of his child. The second was nurse Katie Flowers. The two women were shot near the hospital’s maternity ward.

“It is devastating to learn about the loss of our fellow nurses’ lives in Dallas, Texas,” said R.N. Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United, the largest union and professional association of registered nurses with almost 225,000 members nationwide. “Our hearts go out to the families and colleagues of the nurses who died. No one should lose their life because they went to work.” Concern about violence against health care workers has been renewed with recent incidents like the one in Dallas. Over the summer, a shooting at a Tulsa medical facility on June 1 left four people dead. “There is an epidemic of violence against nurses and other health care workers,” Ross told the Star-Telegram. Health care and social service workers are five times as likely to be injured from violence in their workplace than other workers, TIME magazine reported. Over the last decade, the number of such injuries has risen dramatically —from 6.4 incidents per 10,000 workers annually in 2011 to 10.3 per 10,000 in 2020. It’s become even worse during the COVID-19 pandemic, health care workers say. In September, nearly a third of respondents to a National Nurses United survey said they’d experienced an increase in workplace violence.