Differences in hospitals' workplace violence incident reporting practices: a mixed methods study.

Violence towards healthcare workers can result in harm for staff and patients. This article describes data collected during the first three years of a new statewide incident reporting system, California’s Workplace Violent Incident Reporting System (WVIRS) for Hospitals. Over the three-year period, hospitals reported between 0 and 6 incidents per staffed bed but qualitative analyses revealed variable reporting procedures among hospitals.