Code White: Sounding the Alarm on Violence against Health Care Workers

Summary

When health care workers call a Code White, it’s an emergency response for a violent incident: a call for help. But it’s one that goes unanswered in hospitals, clinics, and long-term care homes across the country. Code White exposes a shocking epidemic of violence that’s hidden in plain sight, one in which workers are bruised, battered, assaulted, and demeaned, but carry on in silence, with little recourse or support.

Researchers Margaret M. Keith and James T. Brophy lay bare the stories of over one hundred nurses and personal support workers, aides and porters, clerical workers and cleaners. The nightmarish experiences they relate are not one-off incidents, but symptoms of deep systemic flaws that have transformed health care into one of the most dangerous occupational sectors in Canada.

The same questions echo in the wake of each and every brutal encounter: Is violence and trauma really just “part of the job”? Why is this going underreported and unchecked? What needs to be done, and how?