How incomplete incidents, combined categories, and undisclosed data are shaping the debate over healthcare violence in Massachusetts
On September 16, two Boston emergency medical technicians were reportedly assaulted in separate incidents approximately five hours apart. Within a day, the Boston EMS Division of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association was citing the two events together as evidence of the urgent need for stronger legal protections for healthcare workers.
The injuries were real enough to require medical evaluation in at least one case, and violence against healthcare workers deserves a serious response. But the speed with which these incidents became an argument for legislation also illustrates a larger problem: the public is often given the most alarming conclusion before it is given the underlying facts.
Two incidents—and a great deal we still do not know
The first incident occurred at Logan Airport at approximately 3:30 p.m. Massachusetts State Police had responded to a report of an altercation involving two passengers, separated them, and determined that one needed a medical evaluation. According to the available reporting, that person became “combative” with both police and an EMT during the intervention. The person was restrained and transported to a hospital. State Police described the EMT’s injuries as minor, and a 28-year-old Boston woman is being summonsed on assault-related charges.
The second incident occurred at approximately 8:30 p.m. at Andrew Station. The MBTA Transit Police are investigating, but virtually no information about the circumstances has been released. We do not know why EMS was called, whether the person accused of assault was the patient, what conduct occurred, whether restraint or involuntary transport was underway, whether the person was experiencing a psychiatric or medical crisis, or whether anyone has been charged.
The Boston EMS union described the injuries across both incidents collectively as involving the head, face, neck, and upper extremities. That description does not tell us which EMT experienced which injury, if there were actually injuries in both instances, or how severe the injuries were. (As aforementioned, the injuries at Logan were explicitly described as “minor”.) Ultimately, the statement combines two different encounters into one alarming—but incomplete—account.
The issue is not that these events should be ignored. Rather, it is that they were quickly invoked in support of stronger criminal-law protections before the public knew enough to assess what happened or whether harsher penalties could plausibly have prevented either event.
A related problem appears in the statewide statistics: important distinctions between what was measured and how the findings are described disappear.
“Nearly seven in ten” experienced what?
One of the most frequently repeated claims is that nearly seven in ten Massachusetts nurses have been assaulted at work.
From what we’ve been able to gather, the underlying source is the Massachusetts Nurses Association’s 2026 State of Nursing in Massachusetts survey. It was conducted by Beacon Research and included 484 Massachusetts registered nurses randomly selected from the Board of Registration in Nursing’s statewide list. More than half of respondents were not MNA members. This makes it substantially stronger for estimating nurses’ experiences than a voluntary open-call survey.
But the survey did not ask nurses whether they had been assaulted.
It asked: “How many instances of workplace violence or abuse did you personally encounter in the past two years?” The preceding question explicitly described workplace violence and abuse as including both verbal and physical abuse.
Sixty-nine percent reported at least one such experience. That is concerning. It is also not equivalent to finding that 69% were physically assaulted.
Nevertheless, official legislative materials transformed that finding into: “Nearly seven out of 10 nurses in Massachusetts now report having experienced an assault in the workplace.” A later release from the Senate again said the legislation was responding to reports that nearly seven in ten nurses had experienced “workplace assault.” Yet, there remains no way to determine how many respondents were physically attacked or even threatened. Some healthcare facilities also use definitions of verbal abuse broad enough to include profanity and raised voices, further muddying what is captured by the combined category.
None of this makes verbal threats or abuse acceptable. They can cause real harm, contribute to fear, and signal unsafe working conditions. But a combined statistic cannot be presented as a physical-assault statistic—particularly when it is being used to justify changes to arrest and criminal law.
A second MNA survey documents physical violence—but cannot estimate its statewide frequency
MNA also conducted a separate Workplace Violence/Abuse Survey in 2024. Unlike the 2026 State of Nursing survey, this survey provides detailed information about specific forms of physical violence.
Among respondents, 50% reported being punched at least once during the preceding two years. Between 48% and 63% reported experiences such as being pinched, scratched, pushed, slapped, spit on, kicked, subjected to unwanted physical touching, or having bodily fluids or objects thrown at them. Twenty-nine percent reported being bitten, 28% had their hair pulled, 12% reported an assault with a weapon, 9% reported being strangled or beaten, and 6% reported sexual assault.
These accounts are deeply concerning. They help demonstrate the range of conduct some nurses experience and should inform prevention efforts and employer accountability.
But here’s the catch: The survey received only 34 complete responses, none of which were randomized in any way. In other words, everyone who submitted a survey chose to do so. Interestingly, despite the low number of respondents, the survey was left open for seven months.
Survey researchers refer to the resulting concern as self-selection or voluntary-response bias: the people who elect to answer may differ systematically from those who do not. People with especially relevant, serious, or memorable experiences may have more reason to complete a lengthy survey devoted to that subject. It is therefore reasonable to suspect that nurses who had experienced violence could be overrepresented—but the direction and size of the bias cannot be calculated from the published information.
That distinction matters. The survey can credibly tell us that serious physical violence is occurring and describe what some nurses experienced. It cannot credibly establish that half of Massachusetts nurses were punched within two years.
The two surveys support different conclusions: the smaller voluntary survey cannot supply the physical-assault breakdown missing from the separate statewide sample. The larger 2026 random sample is more useful for estimating the prevalence of the broad combined category of “violence or abuse.” The 34-person 2024 survey is useful for illustrating forms of physical violence and their effects, but not for estimating statewide rates.
“Every 36 minutes”… something… happens
The other dominant claim is that a Massachusetts healthcare worker experiences violence every 36 minutes.
That figure comes from hospital incident information collected by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association (MHA). Earlier MHA materials described data submitted by 56 acute and post-acute hospitals and stated that someone was “either physically assaulted, verbally assaulted or threatened” every 38 minutes. The current figure has been updated to every 36 minutes and is variously described as an “act of violence or a threat,” “physical or verbal violence,” or a “verbal threat, physical assault, or other form of abuse.”
The category-blurring is especially visible in a June 30 Boston Globe op-ed jointly authored by Cari Medina of 1199SEIU, Katie Murphy of MNA, and Steve Walsh of MHA— leaders of the three principal organizations advancing the legislation. The piece was published under the headline “Every 36 minutes a health care worker is assaulted.” Yet its opening sentence described the underlying statistic as a worker being subjected to “a verbal threat, physical assault, or other form of abuse.” But how many people are actually getting past the headline and absorbing the nuance?
The same op-ed also converted the second composite statistic, asserting that nearly seven in ten nurses had experienced “an assault” and linking to the MNA survey that actually asked about “workplace violence or abuse.” Even the photograph caption repeated the assault characterization. Although opinion writers do not necessarily choose a newspaper’s headline or caption, the body of the jointly authored op-ed itself repeated the apparent misrepresentation.
In an effort to gain more insight into the data, Roots Up Co-Founder, Sera Davidow, contacted MHA seeking the breakdown among physical assaults, verbal threats, verbal abuse, and other incidents. MHA Vice President of Clinical Affairs, Patricia Noga, confirmed that it has more detailed data but said those data points are private and would not be disclosed.
That creates a fundamental transparency problem. MHA is not merely using the statistic for internal safety planning. MHA and its partners are using it publicly to support legislation that would affect arrest, prosecution, and criminal penalties. Legislators and the public are being asked to rely on the dramatic headline while being denied the information necessary to understand what it measures.
Other basic questions also remain unanswered publicly: Are hospitals using consistent definitions? Can one event generate multiple incident reports? What share of reports involved injury? How serious were those injuries? In what settings did incidents occur? What circumstances preceded them? How many involved patients, family members, coworkers, or others? Did an incident occur during restraint, forced treatment, involuntary transport, or another coercive intervention?
MHA’s undisclosed data might show a very high rate of physical assault. But the public presentation of a detailed, 34-person voluntary MNA survey alongside MHA’s refusal to release its own underlying breakdown raises serious questions about which details proponents are willing to disclose—and which they are not. Without the breakdown, we cannot know what the “every 36 minutes” statistic actually represents.
Transparency is not minimization
In addition to the Massachusetts-specific data, we do have international data to reference on this matter. A systematic review/meta-analysis covering 253 studies and 331,544 healthcare workers estimated one-year prevalence at 61.9% for any workplace violence, 42.5% for nonphysical violence, but 24.4% for physical violence.
The substantial gap goes a long way to illustrate the concern. Questioning these statistics does not mean denying that healthcare workers experience violence. The 2024 MNA responses alone describe conduct that should concern anyone committed to safe workplaces. The two September 16 EMT incidents warrant investigation, support for the workers involved, and an honest examination of what happened.
But concern cannot substitute for evidence. “Violence,” “abuse,” “threat,” and “physical assault” are not interchangeable terms and the history of who gets to define them – and who does not – can’t be ignored.
Before Massachusetts changes criminal law, MHA should release its data disaggregated by incident type and severity. MNA, MHA, and lawmakers should describe each statistic using the same categories contained in its source. Future state reporting should distinguish physical assault from threats and verbal abuse; document injuries and their severity; identify relevant settings and precipitating circumstances; and examine the roles of staffing, coercion, restraint, disability, race, and psychiatric history.
Healthcare workers deserve solutions grounded in an accurate understanding of the danger they face. Patients and other community members deserve laws based on evidence rather than category-blurring headlines.
We should not have to guess what the data show—especially when the people asking Massachusetts to act already have the answers.
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This article is a part of the Spotlight on the Workplace Violence bill.
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