‘Seconds Matter’: Canopy CEO Shan Sinha On Healthcare Violence And Protecting Workers

Each day, healthcare workers are threatened with violence in the United States.

Violent injuries are five times more prevalent in healthcare than in other industries, and 75% of the approximately 25,000 workplace assaults reported annually occur in the health industry, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

A survey released in February by National Nurses United found that 8 in 10 nurses experienced at least one incident of workplace violence in the past year.

The amount of workplace violence in healthcare prompted Shan Sinha to found wearable safety company Canopy. The company offers a personal duress button that hospital workers can clip to their badge or clothing to alert system security. The button also works in home health settings as part of an expansion launched this year — Canopy says it covers more than 200,000 healthcare workers.

Healthcare Dive caught up with Sinha, the CEO and founder of Canopy, to talk about workplace violence, technology and how health systems can create an environment that fosters safety.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

HEALTHCARE DIVE: Why do you think healthcare workers are more likely to experience violence compared to employees in other industries?

SHAN SINHA: When [healthcare workers] get assaulted or attacked by patients, [the incidents] tend to go underreported. Sadly, staff tend to conclude that it is just part of the job.

Hospitals are raw, emotional places. Your loved ones are needing care. The system is under stress. Staffing ratios are way lower than they used to be.

When we looked at all the data coming out of the pandemic, clearly there was a rise in violence and assault against staff, but it hasn’t receded over the last few years. And it affects retention; it affects burnout. It’s one of those things that obviously is going to show up if you’re trying to take care of patients on a day-to-day basis.

Imagine having to take care of that patient at 11 p.m. at the end of a long, dark corridor. That can be a pretty anxiety-inducing circumstance when you don’t know what could happen.

How does the Canopy button work? Is pressing it easier than just using a phone to contact help?

When a healthcare worker encounters incidents, they have the potential to escalate very quickly. Seconds matter. If you’re in a situation like that, you’ve entered into a mode where your brain isn’t even able to think, and so the ability to instantly press a button and know that it works like the way it might if you called 911 is hugely critical.

The button just clips onto the back of your ID badge. It’s super lightweight. What’s nice is whenever you show up at work, it belongs to you, so you carry it with you everywhere you go. You know that button is going to be with you when you need it.

When you press that button, it works with a network of devices that we plug in all around the hospital. The system can pinpoint the identity of the individual and where they are in that hospital, whether they’re in the parking lot, or on the fourth floor of building Y. That information is then transmitted and delivered instantly within milliseconds to central security, who can dispatch an officer. It is transmitted to nearby coworkers who can get a note that says this patient needs help in room 403. If you happen to be going into somebody’s home, you can connect to law enforcement and send 911, and then coordinate that with your hospital’s security team.

How can healthcare organizations create a culture of safety going forward?

It’s obvious you’re going to invest in protecting your caregivers against pathogens — gloves, masks, scrubs, all those sorts of things — but safety against this form of violence at work, I think there’s an opportunity to really think about that as a top priority.

The way you create a culture of safety is by prioritizing the investment in keeping your staff safe, and I think that will result in both qualitative and quantitative benefits in fewer nurses to retrain. We know that training a nurse costs at least $50,000 per individual. These are high-skilled workers, and holding on to those assets, investing in them, supporting them will obviously result in significant benefits, not only to the health system but to patients themselves.