Assault became the second leading injury cause
Healthcare worker assaults leading to hospitalisation in Australia rose from 49 in 2015-16 to 126 in 2024-25. The rate climbed from 4.3 to 8.1 per 100,000 healthcare workers.
New figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show assault moved from the fourth to the second leading cause of injury hospitalisation among healthcare workers. By comparison, assault ranks seventh for the general Australian population.
The Australian College of Nursing and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation said the figures confirm years of warnings about safety in hospitals, health services and aged care settings.
ACN chief executive Adjunct Professor Kathryn Zeitz FACN said: “This should not be a wake-up call, because nurses and their colleagues have been sounding the alarm about this for years. But this data definitively shows that there can be no more excuses for inaction.”
AIHW injury data 2024-25
Across the 10 years to 2024-25, healthcare workers recorded 7,416 injury hospitalisations. In 2024-25 alone, there were 819 cases, equal to 53 per 100,000 workers, or about one in 2,000.
Zeitz urged health service boards to make occupational violence a priority. She called for closer monitoring of incidents and enforcement of anti-violence measures.
Falls remained the leading cause of injury hospitalisation in the AIHW data. Contact with objects such as knives, tools or machines also injured healthcare workers.
Zeitz said health services must act now to rein in what she called an epidemic of occupational violence. She also warned that some injured workers never return to work.
The ANMF said the AIHW findings matched reports from health and aged care workplaces across Australia. Federal secretary Annie Butler said nurses, midwives and personal care workers still face attacks, abuse and intimidation at work.
Butler said: “We also know that workplace violence and aggression (WVA) is underreported, so the true scale of the problem could be much worse.”
According to Butler, occupational violence and aggression causes physical injury, psychological harm and trauma. That damage can reduce workers’ capacity to deliver care.
