When will we stop tolerating violence against nurses
Submitted by Victoria McMullen, Professor, CPNP, PMHS, MSN
Tags: abuse hardship nurse safety violence
Imagine starting your day wondering whether or not you would be the victim of an assault. Whether this be physical or verbal, walking into the workplace should not be accompanied by wondering whether today is the day you will be the target of violence. Unfortunately for many healthcare workers, nurses in particular, this is a common occurrence. Whether you’ve experienced this for yourself or not, you’ve heard similar stories over and over again. An angry father put his hands in your face. The psychiatric patient awaiting a bed decided to rip the television off the wall and throw it in your direction. The mother tired of waiting for answers decides to corner you away from your only exit strategy. Rather than filling out a police report, the result is typically being pulled into your manager’s office being asked the question, “What could you have done differently to prevent this from happening.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), up to 38% of nurses suffer from health-care violence at some point in their career and healthcare workers are overall at a much higher risk of being physically, verbally, or sexually assaulted in comparison to other professions. With the most recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics being from 2018, 73% of all reported violence in the workplace occurred in the healthcare setting. These numbers are unacceptable as are the few true examples described above. So what are hospitals doing to protect their workers? Truth be told, not very much. While posters stating aggressive behavior won’t be tolerated in the hospital are tacked near most hospital entrance points, it does little to halt the continuous onslaught of documented abuse nurses especially from day in and day out. Although assault does not always mean someone physically touched them, the lack of respect that some visitors and patients seem to have for healthcare workers is truly appalling.
In any other profession if someone began shouting expletives, refusing to take their hands out of your face, or threatening bodily harm, the police would be called, and that person would be led away in handcuffs. For some reason, if the victim is wearing a badge with the letters “RN” underneath their name, the tolerance for this type of behavior is at a much higher level. Why is that? Why are we typically pulled aside after calling for security and blamed for the incident in the first place? Why is this type of reprehensible behavior met with management or security catering to the aggressors requests versus the nurse? Yes, nurses are dealing with people on the some of the most difficult and frustrating times in their lives, but this does not give anyone the right to act in an aggressive and hostile manner towards their nurses.
Hospital management needs to realize that protecting their staff should be a priority. This should not occur after something happens, but rather policies and procedures should be instituted to prevent them from happening in the first place. Some hospitals have written behavioral plans kept in patient charts that require steps to be taken after an initial act occurs. However if you ask any nurse if these plans are followed, the answer is typically no. When a nurse says that they do not feel safe and the person in question is not removed from the situation, that is essentially telling the nurse their safety is not as important, and the feelings of the patient or visitor are justifiable. Are there misunderstandings and ways that arguments can be resolved? Absolutely. But we are not talking about those situations. We are talking about the times when statements are made that would make the producers of Law and Order blush or hospital room décor is turned into a weapon.
As a victim of aggressive behavior from both patients and their families, I can tell you firsthand that not enough is being done to protect nurses, or staff in general at the bedside. Policies need to be enacted nationwide to protect this country’s nurses. Regardless of the situation, a nurse should not be afraid to enter a room for fear of what may happen and a call to security should make the nurse happy to have protection, not questioning why they bothered calling in the first place. We should not wait until an incident makes the news or the nurse becomes the patient in the emergency room. Upper level management and legislation needs to change to protect nurses and listen to the simple requests of being treated with the same dignity and respect that they prove to their patients.