By Anna Claire Vollers, Stateline.org

One morning earlier this year, as Deb Capistrano came on duty for her shift as a nurse in her hospital’s stroke unit, her colleagues from the night shift warned her that one of her patients for the day was a man who’d been threatening to harm them.

Capistrano has been a registered nurse for 17 years. Threats of violence aren’t new to her. Across the nation, hospitals have become some of the most violent workplaces in America, where health care workers experience workplace violence at triple the rate of all other private industries combined, federal statistics show.

For Capistrano, the worry that she could be hurt while doing her job is always in the back of her mind.

But in California, where she works, robust state law requires hospitals to create

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