Dear Editor:
I wanted to comment on the article “Incidence and Cost of Nurse Workplace Violence Perpetrated by Hospital Patients or Patient Visitors.”
1
I have spent 26 years as a paramedic and nurse in the emergency department. I am very familiar with workplace violence (WPV). Statistics from the 2011 US Bureau of Justice indicated that the rate of nurse WPV was 3.9%. The estimated cost associated with WPV was $4.2 billion. I believe that both of these numbers are woefully lower than the actual numbers. I agree with the reported precipitating factors for WPV in the emergency department, such as large volumes of patients, along with drug-seeking behavior, alcohol intoxication, and drug use. I was not surprised that 14.1% of the 17.1% nurses participating in the study who did not report the most serious career WPV incident were emergency nurses. The study showed that “consistent with the literature and this study was underreporting of WPV.”1
I have never reported an incident of WPV simply because the reporting tool is too cumbersome to navigate. Therefore, to report would take precious time away from patient care in a busy emergency department, and by the end of the shift, I just want to go home. There are plenty of studies and literature, such as this article, indicating that there is a problem, but unfortunately, many administrators look at numbers. Seeing a number of 3.9% seems small. What we need as a profession is a tool to quickly be able to report WPV. With just as many studies reporting increased volumes and overcrowding, an emergency nurse sitting down to spend 10 to 15 minutes filing a report on WPV is just not going to happen. A study by Taylor and Rew2
concluded that future research needs to move beyond documenting the existence of the problem to stronger research designs such as correlational or predictive measures. They indicated that all stakeholders must unite and work together to find a creative solution to this plague. I truly believe that most emergency nurses reading an article indicating that there is a problem with WPV in the emergency department are going to be saying “tell me something I don’t know.”References
Speroni KG, Fitch T, Dawson E, Dugan L, Atherton M. Incidence and cost of nurse workplace violence perpetrated by hospital patients or patient visitors. J Emerg Nurs. In press.
- A systematic review of literature: workplace violence in the emergency department.J Clin Nurs. 2010; 20: 1072-1085
Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 17, 2014
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© 2015 Emergency Nurses Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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- Incidence and Cost of Nurse Workplace Violence Perpetrated by Hospital Patients or Patient VisitorsJournal of Emergency NursingVol. 40Issue 3
