ABSTRACT
Nurses everywhere experience violence in their place of work at some time. For many nurses, violence has long been considered “just part of the job” (Chapman and Styles 2006: 245), but the level of violence in the hospital workplace is increasing, especially in the U.S. (Rintoul, Wynaden, and McGowan 2008, Stirling, Higgins, and Cooke 2001), despite the fact that workplace violence in general in the U.S. has been falling since 1994 (NIOSH 2006). In a review of the literature on violence in the emergency department, Stirling, Higgins, and Cooke (2001) conclude that the majority of violence is performed by young males, at night, involving alcohol or street drugs, and various conditions such as diabetes, head injuries, psychopathology, and waiting times. In a survey of violence in Emergency departments in the U.S. (Behnam, Tillotson, and Davis 2008), the authors randomly selected 65 from the 140 accredited emergency medical residency programs in the U.S. At least one hospital workplace violence incident in the previous 12 months was reported by 78 per cent of respondents and 27 per cent reported more than one type of violent incident. The most common type of workplace violence was verbal threats (75 per cent) followed by physical assaults (21 per cent), confrontations outside the hospital (5 per cent), and stalking (2 per cent). Hospital security was available in almost all settings and 38 per cent of hospitals screened for weapons. Forty percent (40 per cent) of the sample hospitals had metal detectors. Only 16 per cent of the sample hospitals provided violence training to staff, and less than 10 per cent provided defensive training. Workplace violence was reported equally between males and females and was more common in large EDs with yearly visits over 60,000 patients.
