Labour Board Orders Hospital to Do a Workplace Violence Assessment

After her colleague was attacked by an inmate, a nurse and member of the joint occupational health and safety committee asked a Nova Scotia OHS officer to order the medium security corrections hospital where she worked to do a comprehensive workplace violence assessment. The officer denied the request but the Nova Scotia Labour Board overruled him. The hospital had a workplace violence prevention program but the evidence, including the recent attack, demonstrated that it wasn’t working and employees were at risk. So, it gave the hospital 90 days to have an outside expert perform a comprehensive assessment to identify workplace violence risks and appropriate measures to control them [Power v Nova Scotia Health Authority, 2019 NSLB 63 (CanLII), July 5, 2019].