An epidemic of workplace bullying in hospitals and clinics has gotten so bad it will take legislation to put a stop to it, members of the Legislature's Health and Human Services Interim committee were told Wednesday.

And, it's having direct negative effects — sometimes fatal — on the care of patients, said Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem, whose anti-bullying bill was referred by fellow lawmakers this past session to interim study.

The committee took no action Wednesday but will continue studying the issue at monthly meetings between now and the Legislature's general session beginning in January.

Witnesses told committee members that intimidation and other acts of emotional violence by superiors to front-line care providers foster medical errors, contribute to poor care outcomes, increase the cost of care and at minimum force people out jobs they neither want nor should have to leave.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, a national hospital and clinic accrediting agency, last year reported that half the workforce has either been bullied (37 percent) or have witnessed it (12 percent), and that 40 percent of administrators in effect ignore the problem or impose some kind of workforce sanction against the employee involved, not the intimidating superior.

The "proclivities of a tyrant boss" can also include simply shutting someone out of their work for fear of future reprisals and without basis, a retired certified emergency nurse from South Jordan told committee members.

Laura Sorensen said she was barred from being an AirMed nurse by University of Utah risk assessment attorneys because "I had the gall of being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. They looked into their magic crystal ball and saw a potential lawsuit and that day, swept me under the rug."

She said although she was forthright with her supervisors and told them of the diagnosis and that she would ground herself the minute she felt physically compromised by the disabling disease, she was immediately deemed too much of a public relations risk. Because AirMed helicopters provide emergency care in the most high-profile accidents that more often than not are covered by the news media, any sign of impairment such as a limp caught on tape and seen by a victim's family would lay the university open to a malpractice lawsuit, she was told.

To add insult to injury, she said, her superiors regarded her as disabled without the slightest indication she was. Ironically, she wasn't technically disabled enough under the Americans with Disabilities Act that would have protected her from the discrimination against her by the U., she said.

Sorensen said the fears were unfounded and she worked full time for 10 years at other emergency-care centers after her 1993 diagnosis.

Because there is no legal protection of workplace bullying, more than 80 percent of such accusations are dismissed by equal-opportunity and human-resource departments because they can find no "reasonable cause" for action.

Any bullying legislation is too late to protect her, Sorensen said. "In the future, my hope is that employees have adequate laws in place because I don't want others in the future to fall through the legal cracks and experience the same indignity."

e-mail: jthalman@desnews.com