Centegix: Healthcare Workers Say Employers Need to Step Up Protective Measures

By Jay Kumar

A new research report from safety solution provider Centegix finds that most healthcare workers are concerned about their safety on the job and expect employers to improve security measures.

For its 2026 Healthcare Workforce Safety Report, Centegix surveyed 639 healthcare workers who interact with patients, family members, or visitors at least once per week in a healthcare facility. The survey was conducted in January 2026.

“We really wanted to bring to light the voice of the customer and showcase what they think, what they feel, and how often they’re experiencing violence themselves, [how often] they’re seeing it in the workplace,” says Andrea Greco, SVP of Healthcare Safety at Centegix.

Also, she notes, the survey reveals what respondents “think about their organization’s support of driving a layered safety plan or a safe environment and really what they think the impact of that is.”

Centegix’s research also asked respondents “whether they think that some things are going well and maybe others are not and how does that shape their day, their ability to deliver quality care, and their overall interactions with those that are in their care setting and within their community as well,” Greco says.

According to the report, 61% of healthcare workers feel their organization’s safety efforts do not demonstrate a strong concern for their security, and only 36% received both safety training and drill practice in the past year.

Strengthening healthcare worker protections is critical not only for supporting the workforce and ensuring high-quality patient care, but also for addressing the industry’s ongoing personnel shortages. Centegix found that 48% of healthcare workers say safety concerns affect their ability to provide compassionate care, and 54% say staff safety measures are a top priority when considering a job.

Other key findings include:

• Healthcare workers are experiencing alarming levels of workplace violence. Over two-thirds (68%) of healthcare workers have personally experienced one or more violent incidents in the past year, and nearly three-quarters (74%) have witnessed one or more incidents.

• Workplace security measures should be shaped by layered solutions – a combination of people and technology. When asked what measures would make them feel most safe during their workday, healthcare workers ranked security personnel highest (55%), followed by user-activated wearable duress buttons (42%) and video monitoring and security cameras (30%).

• Access to safety solutions drives worker confidence and quality patient care. Employees equipped with wearable duress buttons demonstrated 12% higher perceptions of organizational support, 19% greater feelings of protection, and 25% stronger confidence in their organization’s response to active-shooter situations compared to those without a wearable duress button. Additionally, 45% of workers with wearable duress buttons said access to the technology improves their ability to provide quality care.

• Healthcare workers don’t want to be surveilled. Nearly 70% of respondents said they would prefer a wearable duress button that shares their location only when they actively trigger an alert for help, rather than one that continuously tracks their location.

• Training and readiness gaps are significant. Just 36% of healthcare workers reported receiving both safety training and drill practice in the past year, and 15% reported receiving neither.

Takeaways

The results drove home the sentiment that safety is a major concern for healthcare workers, Greco says.

“Really what we heard was that safety in the workplace is a frequent reality for our healthcare workers. So 26%, more than one in four of them, say that they think about it and they worry about their own personal safety on a weekly basis. And that number actually goes up another 15% to 41% who think about that on a monthly basis as well. Those numbers were pretty high. Not surprising, but high.”

Exposure to workplace violence has become commonplace in healthcare, she notes.

“Another thing that really stood out is that exposure to that violence within the workplace, whether it’s them directly or seeing it, is really just routine. So 68% of healthcare workers have personally experienced one or more violent incidents in the last year and nearly three-quarters or 74% have witnessed one or more incidents. We see the rates of workplace violence continuing to rise in hospital workers. In the past year, 83% of hospital workers reported experiencing workplace violence, while 86% reported witnessing those [incidents] as well.”

Centegix asked respondents about how confident they felt about their organization’s preparedness for workplace violence.

“We also see that confidence around preparedness of an organization to deal with a workplace violence incident has different meanings when they think about that the impact or what is happening. What I mean by that is there’s a greater confidence when folks think that they are prepared to deal with a disruptive patient or an aggregate aggressive family member,” Greco says.

“So 41% of those that were surveyed think that they have an effective plan or expected responses in place to deal with those scenarios. But unfortunately, only 32% think that their organizations are able to or plan to effectively respond to a more elevated situation, something like an active shooter or intruder on a campus or within a building. Those numbers are discouraging, that they don’t feel that there’s a positive or effective plan in place to keep them safe, to keep their patients safe, and other visitors as well that are in the organization.”

The impact on care delivery

The Centegix survey asked respondents about how feeling unsafe affected the quality of care they deliver, Greco says.

“One of the other things that we also highlighted was that lack of feeling safe has other impacts as well,” she says.

When healthcare workers were asked about it, 48% expressed concerns about both their personal safety and their ability to deliver compassionate and quality patient care. “That was over all of those across all care settings,” says Greco. “But among hospital workers, that number goes from 48% to 63%, so even higher for those that have concerns around their ability to deliver quality care.”

Solving the problem

Asked about solutions that would make them feel safer on the job, 55% of respondents said additional security personnel, Greco notes.

“Forty-two percent of those surveyed said that they would feel more safe if they had a discreet kind of wearable that they could utilize no matter where they are on their campus while providing care or traversing the campus itself,” she says. “And then finally to round out the top three of those safety measures that they felt would make them feel more safe during the day was 30% around video monitoring and security cameras being in place.”

More than half of those surveyed said their organization didn’t have wearable duress buttons. Of those that did, 89% said having the technology increased their feeling of safety on the job, Greco notes.

These types of wearables have different options. Some share the user’s location at all times, while others only share location when the button has been activated by the user for assistance. Greco notes that some users prefer the latter option so that they’re not tracked all the time.

Increased surveillance can be useful, despite the privacy concerns, she adds.

“Unfortunately, especially in specific areas—outdoor spaces, elevator banks, stairwells, parking garage, parking lots—they see the necessity for it because those areas are maybe harder to get to quickly,” says Greco. “If you can see what’s going on, you know how to best respond if that is as part of your role within an organization. So I think that they understand the need for it but certainly appreciate that if there were maybe other solutions in place, they wouldn’t need it quite so much…If it’s utilized and invested in with safety at its core, then [workers] feel really good about it and completely understand and feel supported by those solutions.”

Making progress in reducing workplace violence

The increased focus on workplace violence in healthcare is important, Greco says.

“We’re seeing louder and louder voices being willing to talk about this more broadly, whether that’s across organizations that support clinicians,” such as the American Hospital Association, the Emergency Nurses Association, and the International Association of Hospital Security Safety.

“So you have all these organizations that are really focusing in on the importance of safety, the importance for the employee and their satisfaction, but then also downstream the quality of patient care and the value that’s delivered to the community when you have a safe environment within your care setting,” says Greco. “So I think there is more attention on that and now it’s pulling through into legislation that’s in place, not only the continued dialogue at the federal level, but also more and more states adopting laws that have stiffer penalties for causing harm or any kind of workplace violence to a healthcare worker.”

Some of those state laws are requiring healthcare organizations to have a multi-layered safety plan that is well documented and communicated to staff, she says. Given the survey finding that many workers don’t feel like their organization has a quality safety plan or that the plan isn’t practiced enough, those laws can prove helpful.

“There’s still opportunity for investments in both solutions, whether or not that’s a technology, training, or just policies and procedures that are documented, as well as then drilling, practicing again, building that muscle memory of how to react,” Greco says.

She notes that Illinois legislators are currently discussing requiring the use of panic buttons or wearable staff duress badges. “We certainly hope that there’ll be more [discussion] to follow of solutions that are proven to work, proven to be highly adopted by a workforce.”

Another part of the solution is improved security training, Greco says.

“It looks different for different communities. Knowing your community, knowing the needs of your organization is really going to drive how you then change what that footprint looks like of your security personnel,” she adds. “But we’re also seeing other trends, like the security personnel in a hospital are more sophisticated. They’re more highly trained. Many are moving toward necessitating that [security personnel] go through the police academy of their local community so they are trained exactly the same way as police officers that are in the community.”

The difference for healthcare security personnel is the need for empathy, notes Greco.

“That’s to drive more connectedness, how they work together, but additionally, there are other layers of training that happen when you are stationed within a healthcare setting as well because you certainly want to remember that police training itself, but lead a bit more with empathy, with maybe a different type of observation given the setting that that you’re within,” she says.

There’s a fair amount of debate in the healthcare security world around whether to arm security officers.

“Maybe they only are in certain areas. Think about the highest likelihood of areas where violence can occur: Inside ambulance bays, emergency departments, outside spaces,” says Greco. “There is a lot more refinement being talked about around the nature of the training of those individuals that wear a security uniform within a healthcare campus and what are the other things that they have to be aware of that makes it different than serving that population rather than the wider community on a regular basis. It’s definitely a good topic of conversation and I think there are there are ways to engage them, train them, set the expectations for their own behavior that feel like a true security feeling rather than fear.”

When will things turn around?

Greco says a few things must happen before healthcare organizations begin to turn the tide regarding workplace violence.

“One, greater pressure on organizations to have a more visible safety plan, whether that’s more training, more drilling, a wider use of technologies,” she says. “Taking action rather than just saying we understand this is an issue, we support you, we want you to feel more safe.”

In addition, there will still be a need for the reactionary component, she says.

“People will feel more safe when they’re responded to more quickly or they’ve practiced how to position themselves in a room or how to de-escalate a situation, so feeling and seeing the benefits of those,” Greco says. “And then it’s a retraining of those that come into a care setting to either receive care or support those that are. Having signage around that talks about your zero-violence policy, understanding and seeing that if your behavior does not match the environment of expectations of you staying calm.”

If those steps occur, true change could happen, she says.

“We need to see action being taken” to create a secure feeling among healthcare staff, says Greco. “I hope that we get to that place in the future. We’ll just have to continue to be responsive to the needs of those providing care and those that work throughout a healthcare facility all the way to then reshaping and driving improved expectations of those that come in to receive that care.”