Violence against nurses is common. They are they experience physical violence more often than some other medical staff. Violence against nurses takes place in context violence against womenWith 87.5% of the Australian nursing workforce identifying as women.
Nurses report hitting, hitting, throwing at objects or body fluids, kicking, grabbing, spitting on, threatening, pushing, slapping, choking, scratching, biting or sexual assault by patients. Such actions constitute assault, which is against the law. In recent years, Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory introduced stricter penalties for individuals who attack nurses at work as a deterrent.
However, nurses don’t feel empowered or supported to report such crimes, and patients are usually not held accountable for his or her actions. Tougher penalties alone is not going to be enough to guard nurses.
Unhelpful responses from employers and police
As a part of the study, we examined 275 nurses our research. About 83% were attacked by patients. About one-third of the nurses in our study reported having experienced multiple type of assault.
However, just one in three attacked nurses report the attacks to the police. Nurses say the support they receive from employers and the police is mostly poor and so they feel discouraged from continuing to report. Nurses said:
I felt that call was taken away from me and my manager did nothing to support me.
I didn’t file charges as a so-called [there was] pressure from the police to drop the fees and lack of further support from my department on this regard.
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Assaults still seen as ‘a part of the job’
Nurses in our study said they saw assaults as “part of the job.” As someone said:
I used to be told to return to work as soon as I regained consciousness […] I needed to handle the identical patient because “there aren’t enough staff to replace you, and that’s part of nursing.” […] Only 4 hours left until your shift. Then you possibly can go home and sleep.”
Another nurse stated that assaults were common:
[…] this kind of treatment of patients happens often and nobody reports it. There’s a type of culture where you simply move on and cope with it […] I even have experienced physical and sexual violence several times over the past yr, but I didn’t report it to the police because I felt I used to be wasting time and resources and my claim was not valid enough.
This self-limiting culture appears to be long-standing and reinforced by substandard responses from employers and police.
Nurses don’t report cases based on misconceptions
IN our research nurses believed that patients inebriated or affected by mental illness didn’t meet the condition of feeling guilty (men’s rea) required for conviction. Or that they have to be physically injured for the assault to be considered against the law.
However, patients who’re inebriated or suffer from mental illness could also be held liable.
From a legal viewpoint, neither poisoning nor mental illness equals no power know what is sweet and what’s bad. Claiming that somebody can’t be held chargeable for their actions resulting from mental illness may be perceived as stigmatizing and unfair. It shouldn’t be as much as the nurse, employer or police to evaluate an individual’s mental capability. Every person have to be presumed to be “mentally sane” unless proven otherwise through the prosecution.
Another misconception is that nurses have to be physically injured for an assault to be reported. As one in all the nurses said:
I do not think it’s price reporting this to the police because no visible harm was done to me.
The harm attributable to an assault may be physical, emotional or psychosocial (impacting your thoughts and the way you interact with others). However, assault shouldn’t be characterised by the result, but reasonably by the act itself. A patient could also be found guilty of assault if she or he physically attacks or threatens to achieve this.
Benefits of reporting to the police
Laws help set standards of what is correct and improper in society. To implement the law, nurses must first go to the police and testify in order that the abusive patient may be charged. The police can then present this evidence to the prosecutor, who decides whether there may be enough evidence to convict.
Reporting a matter to the police can have far-reaching consequences, including:
- enforcing a culture of respect and safety, improving staff retention and wellbeing
- Helping patients know their rights to receive health care have to be balanced with nurses’ rights to a protected workplace
- establishing a consistent standard of acceptable behavior in society, which incorporates health care facilities.
Many nurses have been attacked by patients, but only a couple of report it to the police. Employers and authorities must work together to enable and support nurses to report assaults. It is thru this collective effort that we will hold patients accountable and ultimately protect nurses from harm.
