Allegations filed with the Hawaii Occupational Safety & Health Division echo claims from a whistleblower lawsuit.
Employees at Hawaiʻi State Hospital are alleging unsafe working conditions there after a recent series of violent incidents, and their complaint has prompted an inquiry by the Hawaiʻi Occupational Health and Safety Division.
The complaint was filed with HIOSH on June 6 alleging three employees at the hospital for the mentally ill were assaulted by a patient May 6 and May 7. Another staffer was punched in the jaw May 29 while giving a patient an injection, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by Civil Beat. The document does not identify who filed the complaint.
It alleges the hospital administration has “failed to implement or maintain adequate workplace violence prevention protocols.” Meanwhile, two hospital members said in interviews the monthly count of patient-on-staff assaults has been rising.
A staffer who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media cited internal hospital data showing the facility logged more than three dozen incidents where patients assaulted staff in each of the first three months of this year.
By comparison, the hospital documented 222 assaults in all of 2024, the staffer said. Representatives from HIOSH visited the hospital and spoke to employees June 10 in response to the complaint, the staffer said.
Chavonnie Ramos, spokesperson for the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, confirmed HIOSH opened an investigation into a complaint filed by a hospital employee. She said staff will follow up with fact-finding interviews with staff and management.
Ramos said the department cannot provide any further information because the investigation is ongoing, and could last six months or more.
The HIOSH complaint alleges the management team at the hospital has discouraged the use of restraints when moving violent patients “despite the known risk of injury.”
It also alleges management has limited the use of one-on one supervision of high-risk or aggressive patients as a cost-cutting measure “despite staff concerns that reduced monitoring increases the likelihood of assaults.”
Another Dangerous Periodʻ
“The docs, the teams, the units, are getting a strong message — don’t put them in restraints,” said Michael Quinn, who is on the verge of retiring as a nurse manager at the hospital.
Quinn said in an interview the ranks of social workers and psychiatrists at the hospital are depleted, leaving staffing in those specialties at only about half-strength. He said the remaining staff is also stretched thin, with large caseloads.
Meanwhile, the top administrators at the hospital are advocating for management strategies designed for less violent populations, he said.
“The State Hospital has everybody, particularly the high end folks,” Quinn said. “This administrative team is coming in trying to impose a way of managing a much lower risk inpatient population.”
Quinn added: “The hospital right now is going through another dangerous period.”
Stephen Downes, director of communications for the state Department of Health, said in a written statement the state hospital “is the only public psychiatric hospital in the state and solely dedicated to serving patients with serious mental illness.”
“HSH patients are court-ordered into the custody of the DOH until they are discharged by the court,” Downes said. “HSH must accept all patients in the custody of the DOH, which is why the number of patients may increase beyond what is optimal.”
Patients who are court-ordered to the hospital typically have complex psychiatric conditions, substance abuse and medical problems, Downes said in the statement, and are considered to be a danger to themselves or others.
“Staff safety is a priority, and although efforts are made to reduce patient-on-staff assaults, not all can be prevented and they do occur in psychiatric hospitals, including HSH,” he said.
Downes also said statistics from the Western Psychiatric State Hospital Association’s 2024 Benchmarking Data show the hospital has a relatively low rate of aggressive behavior against staff compared to other comparable facilities in the region.
Whistleblower Lawsuit
The allegations in the HIOSH complaint echo some claims made public last week by former hospital Chief of Psychiatry Brenton Yuen. Yuen filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging he was demoted after he warned hospital administrators about allegedly inadequate staffing at the hospital.
That lawsuit alleges Yuen warned hospital management in January the facility was “dangerously understaffed” at times, and described some employee complaints about assaults on staff. The patient population at the hospital is more than twice what it was five years ago, according to the lawsuit.
Almost all patients at the hospital are sent there by the court system after they have been arrested. Some are there to undergo evaluations to determine if they are mentally fit to stand trial for crimes, while others are assessed to determine if they were mentally responsible for their actions.
Some are confined at the hospital for extended periods for treatment after they have been acquitted because they were deemed to be so severely mentally ill that they were not legally responsible for their actions.
Assaults on hospital staff have been a problem for years, and in one case proved fatal.
Nurse Justin Bautista, 29, was stabbed to death by a patient on the hospital campus on Nov. 13, 2023. Patient Tommy Carvalho pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in that case, and is being held at the Oʻahu Community Correctional Center.
Ramos said HIOSH also opened a probe into the Bautista case, but closed its inquiry into that attack last year without issuing a violation.
In order to issue a citation, there must be evidence that an employer “could have reasonably known about the hazard and taken steps to prevent it,” Ramos said. However, she said investigators in that case concluded the circumstances in Bautista’s death “were unforeseeable.”
By: https://www.civilbeat.org/2025/06/violence-at-state-hospital-triggers-workplace-safety-complaint/
