Violence is not ‘part of the job’

By Sajeeda Kuthdoos, Cherrie Gonzales & Christy Green, BCLocalNews.com

Most people may not know that nurses rank second to only police officers and prison guards as victims of workplace violence.

Though it is often tacitly accepted and regarded as a “part of the job,” violence against nurses in the workplace has become an issue that is rampant, unacknowledged and detrimental to health care as a whole.

The Canadian Nurses Association defines violence broadly to include verbal and emotional abuse, physical violence and sexual harassment. After experiencing violence ourselves and exploring the issue further, we discovered a number of alarming statistics.

According to a national survey, 58 per cent of nurses experienced some form of violence within their last 10 shifts. More shockingly, in British Columbia, nearly half of nurses surveyed experienced one or more types of violence within their last five shifts.

In 2008, health care workers accounted for 40 per cent of all violence-related claims despite representing less than five per cent of B.C.’s workforce. Although these numbers are remarkable, they do not accurately reflect the magnitude of the issue, because of a high level of unreported incidents. In B.C., 64 per cent of physical violence, and 72 per cent of emotional violence against nurses went unreported.

We chose this profession because of our passion for helping others. Feeling unsafe at work affects not only our ability to deliver top-notch care, but also our emotional well being.

While we acknowledge that violence will always be a challenge faced in nursing, due to the physical and emotional state of the individuals we interact with, that safety in the workplace is not only non-negotiable, but a basic right.

The first step is to create awareness. The simplest way to do this is to support and encourage nurses to report workplace violence as it occurs. Research states that many nurses do not report workplace violence because of the belief that violence is part of the job, the stigma of victimization (for example, shame, isolation or fear experienced by nurses), lack of supervisor support, excessive paper work, and poor follow up and investigation by employers. These barriers must be broken in order to address this issue further. Once the significance of this problem is accurately reflected, other strategies to reduce workplace violence and enhance the safety of this profession can be implemented.

In no other profession is such an acute level of violence deemed acceptable.

Violence is not, and never should be, “part of the job.”