Patient Violence against Nurses. Prevention and Solutions

Essay from the year 2022 in the subject Nursing Science - Nursing Management, grade: 98, , course: NIH, language: English, abstract: Healthcare workers are prone to workplace violence from external and internal parties. Because nursing represents the most extensive portion of healthcare workers in the United States, nurses are disproportionately vulnerable to violence attributable to patients. Patient violence is an endemic occupational hazard with significant effects on nurses, patient care, and organizational performance. Nurses working in unsafe may encounter physical injuries, sexual assaults, and verbal abuse, increasing the risk of developing emotional distress and psychiatric disorders. Patient violence is also a precursor to suboptimal staff productivity, job dissatisfaction, and high employee turnover. It hinders effective nurse-patient relationships, reducing the quality of therapeutic communication. The overall effect of patient violence has consequential implications to the nursing profession, patient care, and workplace safety, highlighting the need for comprehensive measures to subdue violence incidence in healthcare settings.

Although the American Nurses Association (ANA) advocates for zero-tolerance of "incivility, bullying, and workplace violence," inadequate incidence reporting mechanisms limit the ability to nurture staff safety. Some staff members may dismiss covert and overt aggressiveness attributable to patients with problematic behaviors and, unfortunately, propagate unsafe working situations. Thus, effective incidence reporting policies are instrumental in promoting mitigating violent encounters from patients or their family members.