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SDW news brief: ENA aims to prevent violence against nurses

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, June 3, 2011

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Imagine if every time you came to work, there was a pretty good chance you would face a threat of physical violence or verbal assault?

This is an everyday experience for emergency department nurses. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 46% of all violent acts in the workplace that necessitated days away from work were against RNs. And in the HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey 2011, just 40% of healthcare professionals surveyed said nurse leaders have "effectively addressed" workplace hostility.

The Emergency Nurses Association is engaged in a multi-year study to examine workplace violence against ED nurses and recently released data from the first section. The study questioned more than 3,000 ENA members from across the country and asked whether they had experienced workplace violence in the past seven days. Eleven percent responded they had experienced physical violence in the last week. Fifty-four percent had been subjected to verbal abuse within the last week. Unsurprisingly, physical violence rarely occurred without verbal abuse.

The most prevalent types of violence are:

• Physical violence
  • Grabbed or pulled
  • Hit
  • Spit on
• Verbal abuse
  • Yelled or shouted at
  • Sworn or cursed at
  • Called names

Click here to read the full article for free.

Source: HealthLeaders Media

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