Workplace Violence in Health Care Morgan L. Hofmeister Baker University School of Nursing Workplace Violence in Health Care Workplace violence is a prevalent issue in today’s society. Workplace violence is defined as a form of conflict that is intentional and causes harm through verbal or physical abuse, threats, persistent harassment, or injury. “Rates of workplace assault are higher for health care workers than for any other industry, specifically nurses working in hospitals” (Gates, Gillespie, Kowalenko, Succop, & Sanker, 2011, p. 304). Due to the the lack of reporting, interventions, and awareness of this issue, workplace violence will continue or escalate if not addressed. This is a historical, ongoing issue with …show more content…
An Emergency Nurses Association study found that, “every week between eight to thirteen percent of emergency department nurses are victims of physical violence” (Trossman, 2010, p. 6). The physical repercussions of violence can include a physical injury, anger, chronic pain, loss of sleep, disability, muscle tension, anxiety, irritability, and nightmares (Gates, Gillespie, & Succop, 2011, p. 60). The reasons and risk factors for these violent encounters are varied and create a lengthy list. Low staff, lack of visitor policies, diagnosis of dementia and Alzheimer’s patients, misperceptions of staff behaviors, lack of training in aggressive behavior, care of psychiatric patients, and release of mental ill patients without proper follow up are all potential factors that may cause workplace violence (Stokowski, 2010). Many times hospitals do not respond to incidences; almost half of the fifteen percent of nurses who have reported physical violence with a physical injury result in no action taken against the offender (Trossman, 2010, p. …show more content…
Reporting of workplace violence is encouraged, but not every state has laws enforced to protect a nurse (Stokowski, 2010). There are some states that are filling in this gap and protecting nurses by passing legislation (Trossman, 2010, p. 6). There are states that have addressed the violence by developing prevention programs, strategies to increase reporting, and gaining more research on the issue (Stokowski, 2010). As of 2010, these states are California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Washington, and West Virginia (Stokowski, 2010). Then, there are states who have passed legislation for penalty acts against convicted offenders (Stokowski, 2010). As of 2010, these states are Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, and New Mexico (Stokowski, 2010). The American Nurses Association is actively involved in this lack of legislation issue and has created a model state of bill for health care facilities to use to create their own legislation (Trossman, 2010, p.
Several databases including Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, CINAHL, MEDLINE, and Cochrane were accessed using the key words “workplace violence,” “nurses,” student nurses,” horizontal violence,” “bullying,” “oppression,” and “intergroup conflict.” The purpose of the literature search was to determine the predominance of horizontal violence among new nurses and nursing students.
The majority of the articles reviewed found that education on regcognizing and addressing lateral violence was the key to decreasing the its incidence. The difference in the articles is when the education should take place; Ebrahimi, Negarandeh, Jeffrey, and Azizi, (2016) conducted a study on experienced nurses who either committed workplace violence or had witnessed it against new nurses. The small interview style study consisted of questions discussing why the participants felt the violence occurred on new nurses. At the conclusion this study reccommended preparing the experienced nurse on how to support the new nurses, providing education to the new nurses on how to deal with workplace violence, and should problems arise how to help the staff resolve
According to (Abdollahzadeh, 2016), the issue of incivility in nursing can be defined as “low intensity” deviant behavior with the intent to harm the target. Nurses are subjected to incivility at a higher rate than other job fields, and this concern is one that has an impact on the mental health and well-being of nurses and can lead to a reduction in job satisfaction and employee recruitment and retention
Assaults in the healthcare setting are recognized as a growing problem. In considering the violence and aggression in mental health units, the larger issue of violence and aggression in mainstream culture must not be ignored. It has been observed that physical attack in a mental health unit setting appear to be happening more frequently while the attacks include patient-to patient and patient-to-staff aggressive behavior. Most commonly, reporting of aggressive behavior toward healthcare staff is noted; however, it cannot be completely explained by patient characteristics or staff member behaviors (Foster, Bowers, & Nijman, 2006). To improve patient control of aggression and violence, an organization must better define the management and reporting of this behavior, identify appropriate management programs and training, and evaluate the frequency and precipitants.
Therefore, this position statement is relevant because these abuses can be seen in day-to-day healthcare environment. The effects of violence in nursing can be harmful to the proper function within a workplace. It can be damaging to the nursing profession and patient care. According to (Johnston et al., 2010, p.36), workplace violence is “spreading like a ‘superbug.’” Studies have shown, that lateral violence, nurse-on-nurse, has been one of the highest incidence of violence within the workplace. Also, statistics have shown that lateral violence has one of the most emotional impacts on an individual. This will be further discussed below. For these reasons, it is important for healthcare workers to validate the detrimental effects violence can have in the workplace, and be prepared to combat and prevent workplace violence.
This is largely due to nurses leaving their jobs and/or medical incidents involving patients. A nurse working in an environment lacking civility can create stress and anxiety for the nurse. This, in turn, will lead to poor attitudes, decreased productivity, increased absences, and higher job turnover rates (Kerber, 2015). While working in uncivil environments is unhealthy for the healthcare professionals, it has also been shown to greatly affect patient care. A nurse working in a hostile environment can feel stress and overwhelmed, which can lead to an altered emotional state. Blevins (2015) reports in Impact of Incivility in Nursing that nurses working in this type of environment can “experience stress-related disorders and physical illness” which can decrease work attendance. A nurse or healthcare provider providing patient care in this emotional state can turn their negative feelings into uncivil behavior toward the patient or miss something critical to patient care, leading to patient harm or death. For example, if a nurse is upset about being disrespected from a fellow healthcare worker the nurse might turn her emotions on the patent by not asking the right assessment questions, or writing off a critical detail the patient is reporting. Incivility can also reach the patient level when a nurse is afraid to ask questions regarding patient care to the charge nurse as a result of recent bullying. The opposite is also true; If a patient is being discourteous to a nurse who is being civil and helping to the patient, it might make the nurse unconcerned about patient care satisfaction. This can spiral into an incivility cycle that is hard to
Nurses encounter various challenges in the workplace. One of the most alarming trends is that they often become the victims of physical violence. It should be kept in mind that healthcare settings account for about 60 percent of all violent assaults that occur in various American workplaces (Gates, Gillespie, & Succop, 2011, p. 59). Additionally, more than 50 percent of nurses report that they suffered from physical abuse, at least once (Gates et al., 2011, p. 60). In turn, this tendency makes nurses even more vulnerable to the effects of stress. Moreover, they are likely to feel dissatisfied with their jobs. This paper is aimed at reviewing the scholarly articles that can illustrate the origins of this problem and its impacts on the experiences
Research indicates the relationship between horizontal violence and the burn out rate of registered nurses to be epistemologically significant due to a determined prevalence of nonphysical violence in the health care setting and the potential nature, severity and ubiquitous state of its prospective consequences. This systematic review will examine the aforementioned phenomenon in further detail with a focus on specific implications, if any, on the burn out rate of registered nurses.
...ic violence, as we can see from the previous read information, results in injury. It is a very serious issue for the people within a violent home setting and with today’s legal system domestic violence cases are being taken extremely serious. It is important that we as nurses, if we feel someone is in a violent home setting, to identify these patients and assess as needed. By nurses identifying and assessing victims of violent acts we can help these people and contribute to decreasing the number of violent acts that occur. If a nurse or anyone knows or suspects that someone is being abused, we need to let that victim know there are alternative solutions, choices they can make, and that there is hope to solve the problem at hand. We should also let this victim know that without help, this problem may only get worse and could progress in frequency and severity.
In 2012, 4,383 people were killed in work place accidents.463 people died from homicide or 11% of the total number (Bureau of Labor Statistices, 2013). The government has various agencies, such as Occupational safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), The U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration and the Department of Justice in place to protect worker, to ensure the workplace is safe, however for reasons often unknown, we see people resort to violence to solve their problems. In 2014 we have seen a shooting in Seattle, Santa Barbara and Fort Hood.
The target population being used for this thesis consists of nurses, nurse managers, and nursing care assistants. The setting will take place at a hospital in Saginaw, MI on three medical surgical floors. Lateral violence in the workplace has been well researched but there have been few studies examining what
Violence is all around us; we see it portrayed in one form or another everyday. It has become commonplace to see it on TV and in our own environment. To the average person this has become an acceptable part of life, along with taking personal precautions to prevent it from happening to them. However, there are a small few that need attention and see violence as a way to get their message across. Unfortunately, the media is right there to dramatize it for all to see. As future public administrators we must be aware of potential workplace violence from not only potential customers but from our employees and co-workers as well. We must equip ourselves with the tools necessary to prevent the potential for workplace violence to protect our employees, customers and ourselves. The ability to identify which workplaces have a higher risk factor then others will be to our benefit and add to our effectiveness as an administrator.
Workplace violence is any action or verbal menacing with the intent to inflict physical or psychological violence on others. The US Department of Labor defines workplace violence as “An action (verbal, written, or physical aggression) which is intended to control or cause, or is capable of causing, death or serious bodily injury to oneself or others, or damage to property. Workplace violence includes abusive behavior toward authority, intimidating or harassing behavior, and threats.”("Definitions," n.d.)
...tion programs, and provide more training for security guards are well as workshops for nurses. This could be implanted in all hospitals making in a job requirement. Thus, having these types of training programs would allow for nurses to feel more confident in their role as a caregiver and allow them fully utilize their skills when working with patients. Also, if patients were aware that nurses received this training they would be less inclined assume authority over their caregiver. To avoid conflict within the nursing profession we must make people aware of what is happening behind closed doors and prepare the professionals to act in response to violence. If nurses continue to be known as vulnerable and accept the violence which is perpetrated towards them, the gender script will not disappear and will continue to progress into a violence workplace environment.
According to the Department of Labor in the United Sates (n.d.), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) stated that workplace violence is any acts or threats that are physical violence, harassment, intimidation or any other threatening disruptive behaviors that happened in the working place. Workplace violence can be ranged from threat and verbal abuse to physical coercion, assault and even homicide, influencing and including employees, customers and visitors. For instant, a study in Ghana on the implication of workplace violence on causing the nurses' intent to emigrate from year 2013 to year 2014 has been carried out. From the result of the study, it showed that higher percentages of nurses who have experienced violence are more likely than who were not involved in such incidents to have intention to emigrate (Boafo, 2016). Thus, this condition has led to lacking of nurse working in the local hospitals, especially in the low and middle income countries.