Author: Heidi Steiner, DNP, RN, Clinical Product Manager, Caregility
March 31, 2026
Workplace violence in healthcare is not a rare event. It’s an ongoing safety issue that affects care teams across settings, especially in high-acuity, high-stress environments.
OSHA notes that incidents of serious workplace violence were, on average, four times more common in healthcare than in private industry, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics-backed data. Healthcare workers also accounted for 73% of all nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses due to violence in 2018.
Emergency care settings are especially vulnerable. In one study of emergency department physicians and nurses, 33% reported experiencing physical violence in the prior year, while 46% said they had witnessed physical violence against colleagues. A 2024 study in a large urban emergency department found healthcare workers experienced workplace violence once every 3.7 shifts.
And even those numbers understate the scope of the problem. Workplace violence in healthcare is widely underreported. In one hospital study, 88% of workers who self-reported a violent event had not documented it in the electronic reporting system, even though many had mentioned it informally to supervisors. Researchers point to underreporting as a major barrier to prevention and improvement.
The impact goes far beyond the incident itself. Research shows workplace violence is associated with higher stress and burnout, lower job satisfaction, and stronger turnover intentions among healthcare workers.
That’s the backdrop for an important question: How can healthcare organizations become more proactive, not just reactive, in protecting staff and patients?
How Ambient Sensing Helps Create Safer Patient Rooms
Hospitals have long relied on staff training, security, panic buttons, reporting protocols, and de-escalation practices to address violence. Those measures matter, but they often come into play after a situation has already escalated.
This is where AI-enabled ambient sensing can add value.
At Caregility, we see an opportunity to help healthcare organizations become more preventive and proactive by introducing technology that can recognize when something is going wrong in the patient room and trigger help faster.
Using software within connected care devices in the patient room, healthcare organizations can add sound-based intelligence that listens for signs of a violent event or severe distress and sends an alert to a remote clinician or monitoring resource.
See How Sound Event-Based Room Alerts Work (Trigger Warning: Sounds of Duress)
The goal is not to replace clinical judgment. It is to shorten the time between the start of an incident and human intervention. I have seen firsthand how important that can be.
Protecting Healthcare Staff
My daughter is an ICU rapid response nurse. When she was seven months pregnant, she was caring for a patient experiencing delirium when he attacked her. Even though help did come, about 30 seconds passed first, and to her, it felt like a lifetime.
That experience has stayed with me. It reinforced something many clinicians already know: even in a highly staffed hospital environment, a dangerous situation can unfold quickly, and staff may not always be able to summon immediate assistance in the moment.
Protecting Patients
The value of sound monitoring is not limited to workplace violence. It also has the potential to support patient safety, especially for patients who are confused, frail, cognitively impaired, or unable to communicate distress effectively.
My sister-in-law was living with progressive Huntington’s disease in a nursing home. One night, she fell out of bed and ultimately passed away from the injuries related to that fall. It is hard not to think about what might have happened if there had been a way to detect activity or distress in the room earlier and alert staff before the event became fatal.
No technology can prevent every tragedy. But better visibility into what is happening in the room can create more opportunities to intervene.
What AI-powered sound monitoring can do
When thoughtfully deployed, ambient sound monitoring can support safer care environments in three important ways:
Early detection: AI-enabled devices can analyze environmental sounds in real time to identify warning signs of aggression or distress before the situation becomes more dangerous.
Real-time alerts: Instead of relying solely on a staff member to call for help, the system can notify designated personnel immediately when violent sounds or distress cues are detected.
Proactive protection: Earlier awareness can enable faster intervention, helping reduce harm to staff and protect patients.
Ambient listening is especially compelling because it supports privacy and can be easier to scale than a camera in every room. In Caregility’s approach, the system is intended to detect concerning audio patterns and generate alerts rather than continuously record room audio. That distinction matters for both staff trust and patient acceptance.
Use cases for sound monitoring in patient rooms
As health systems look to the future, sound-based monitoring could support a broader range of room-aware workflows. Potential use cases include:
1. Escalation detection in behavioral health or delirium care
Raised voices, screams, repeated distress vocalizations, or abrupt acoustic changes may signal agitation, conflict, or crisis.
2. Fall-risk support
Sound cues associated with bed exit attempts, impact events, or calls for help may help staff respond faster, especially for patients who do not use nurse call request tools.
3. Respiratory or symptom surveillance
While this is a different use case from violence prevention, the broader body of audio AI research suggests sound analysis may help identify clinically meaningful cues such as cough or breathing-related distress.
4. Smarter virtual observation workflows
Sound-triggered alerts can help direct scarce virtual observation and remote nursing resources to the rooms that may need attention most urgently.
5. Documentation and workflow orchestration
Ambient intelligence can support documentation, staff notifications, and help connect room events to escalation pathways, improving both response time and operational visibility. Voice-enabled AI is already being explored in clinical settings to reduce cognitive burden and surface timely prompts for care teams.
Safer rooms support safer teams
Healthcare organizations are working hard to improve retention, reduce burnout, and create care environments where clinicians feel supported. Safety has to be part of that conversation.
Violence prevention cannot rest entirely on individual clinicians being more vigilant, more resilient, or faster to call for help. Health systems need layered strategies that combine policy, training, staffing, reporting, and technology.
That is where AI can play a meaningful role. If healthcare wants to move from reactive response to proactive protection, ambient listening is a great place to start.
When ambient sensing is deployed responsibly, it can strengthen virtual sitter and virtual nursing programs by extending awareness into the patient room, accelerating intervention, and helping teams respond before a situation becomes harmful.
Ultimately, tools like these are about more than alerts. They are about giving healthcare workers added support in moments that matter, helping patients get attention sooner, and building care environments that feel safer for everyone involved.
To learn more about our duress monitoring solutions, set up a demo today.
