What puts nurses and aides in harm’s way at work?

Violence in health care isn’t just bad behavior between one person and another. Research keeps showing that some workers face much higher risks than others. Nurses and nursing assistants, especially women and people of color, report more threats, shouting, and even physical attacks. Yet many studies still treat violence as if everyone starts from the same spot. They miss how gender and race shape who gets targeted—and who does the targeting. Think about it: power in health care isn’t shared equally. Women make up most of the nursing staff, and many hold lower-paying assistant roles. At the same time, patients or families sometimes transfer the anger they feel toward the system onto the workers who look or sound different from them. When layers of identity overlap—being a Black woman in a top role, or a Latino man in an aide position—risks pile up fast.Experts call this overlap “intersectionality. ” It helps explain why a single policy, like extra training on de-escalation, doesn’t fix everything. The training may help some groups more than others because it doesn’t tackle deeper issues like bias or hierarchy. A review of past studies confirms this gap: most focus on incidents after they happen, not on why certain faces see more hostility every shift. Most surprising? Few projects dig into how coworkers treat each other. Yes, patients and families lash out, but colleagues can too. Racist jokes, sexist comments, or exclusionary behavior often fly under the radar. When researchers skip these layers, they miss half the picture—and half the solutions.