By Mackenna Moralez

One person was shot and killed at CHI St. Vincent North hospital in Sherwood, Arkansas, after a gunman opened fire in a targeted assault. 

Raymond Lovett Jr. has been taken into custody and has been charged with capital murder and aggravated assault. State police said the deceased person was visiting a patient in the hospital when he was shot. The hospital was placed on lockdown, and officers from the Sherwood Police Department worked to clear the facility, KATV reports.  

"Today is a tragic day in the history of our ministry here at CHI St. Vincent," Chad Aduddell, the CEO of CHI St. Vincent said in a statement. "We grieve today for life that was lost. We grieve for our coworkers, patients, families and many others whose lives are forever changed by today's events." 

There has been a recent increase in gun violence occurring at hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Earlier this year, five people were killed in a mass shooting at Saint Francis Health System’s Natalie Building in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That same day at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, two people were also shot and killed.  

With the growth in workplace violence, many healthcare facilities managers have begun reevaluating their organization's active shooter plans and reconfiguring access control systems. Meanwhile, Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) recently published its Workplace Violence Prevention Handbook for Healthcare Professionals to provide recommendations and strategies to help individuals to improve their workplace violence prevention programming to generate immediate results.  

“Health care professionals continue to face a rising tide of violence in the workplace,” says Susan Driscoll, president of CPI. “The increase in violence is creating unsustainable challenges, including physical harm to workers, rising numbers of dedicated professionals leaving the field to which they were called, and greater difficulty providing effective patient care.”