In health care, nurses and the patient care assistants experience a high rate of violence. The Emergency Department nurses has the highest rate of violence among all nurses. The reason for the high rate of violence is due to emotions and having stressful situations the nurses are going through. As the violence …show more content…
There are inadequate training on violence prevention and self- defense, inadequate staffing for the facility, the time of day it is, and the activities at the healthcare facility. The unexperienced healthcare workers are especially at risk for assault, largest number of injures occurs during the attempts to contain patient violence. Short staffing and temporary staffing are also risk factors of violence in the workplace.
The danger of violence in the workplace comes from the exposure of violent individuals combined with lack of strong violence prevention programs, and protective regulations. Workplace violence is the most complex and dangerous hazards facing nurses. Agitated patients in the mental facilities and the emergency departments, the demented elderly patients in nursing homes and any other patients with histories of physical abuse, are the common source of the verbal and physical violence against nurses.
The training for the nurses in recognizing potential violence, defusing violence and dealing with the aftermath of violence is greatly needed in many of the healthcare workplace. Also training in recognizing and management of the aggressive behavior that may be life saving for healthcare …show more content…
There is also verbal abuse, which is aggression towards the nurse. The verbal abuse can lead to anxiety, depression, and stress from the abuse. Most of the verbal abuse can go unreported from the nurses due to not wanting to be bothered in reporting it or fear that no one will believe them.
There are four different types of workplace violence. Type I- Criminal Intent, Type II-Customer/Client, Type III- Worker-on-Worker, and Type IV- Personal Relationship. These types of abuses are recognized to the evaluator to assess what kind of abuse it is. Another definition of workplace violence is physical and psychological violence, abuse, mobbing or bullying, racial harassment, and sexual harassment.
Workplace violence is now being recognized as a major health priority by the World Health Organization, because the number of nurses affected by this problem is still on the rise. The American Association of College of Nursing Position Statement does want facilities to prepare newly licensed nurses to recognize and prevent all forms of workplace