Workplace Violence

In early July of this year, there was an article published in the Toronto Star regarding nurses and the violence they experience at work. According to the study, there has been an increase in reporting assaults, whether they are physical/sexual/verbal abuse.

The link:
Workplace Violence - Nursing

Now I've heard from plenty of people who say nursing is an awesome job with great pay and benefits, and secure because nurses are needed everywhere. Especially with the Baby Boomers heading for retirement, this will open up plenty of opportunities for young new grads. However, schools fail to really explore the dangers of being a front line staff worker. A lot of young people are exposed to the superficial aspect of nursing, but do not know the emotional, physical and mental involvement in becoming a nurse. Plus, the violence that could occur while working.

People have told me that it's normal to experience violence in the workplace because of what I do. No, it's not normal. Any workplace should be free of violence. There should not be any workplace that tolerates violence or encourages it. Personally, I have been scratched, kicked, spat on, sworn at, threatened, grabbed and bitten by people that I was trying to take care of.

This is still an on-going issue and continuous battle that all nurses face in the workplace. Just recently, a patient had sucker punched my co-worker right in the eye, because 1) he was tired and 2) he had a headache and didn't like the nurse talking to him. The third I may add, there was a bit of cognitive impairment/delay. But does it make it right to punch someone? No, of course not. Especially when that someone is trying to help you. Some first aid was required, and security was called to escort the patient back to his room. Notifying the management and writing up an incident report was done. But yet this still occurs on various units. We may blame the illness for making the person act that certain way, but really, it isn't fair to the health care workers if we aren't protected by the workplace.

The fact that violence is escalating brings up a huge red flag. Something is obviously very wrong with the entire system if nurses are getting constantly assaulted, injured, and then having to take time off work. If only nurses could punch back when they get injured, that would make it fair. But they can't. They are the ones who keep the system together, who help take care of patients from their sickest to recovery stage. As soon as a nurse punches someone, there goes the trust in nurses. In the end, no matter how much abuse a nurse experiences, they have to suck it up and deal with it. Is it right? I don't think it is. But it's not like you can rewind and erase the event. The union can only do so much, and it would require constant complaints until something happens.

Nursing schools barely touch on workplace violence, and if they did, it was only brief. They say one or two sentences that sound easy to say when they give a scenario. But until you are faced with that situation in real life, that one sentence they teach you to say may be useless. They should have included some self defence class in nursing school. I didn't learn about that until I started work. I thought it was kind of ridiculous that they would teach that, because they never mentioned much in school. Just a bunch of theory that I would never use in real life. But then I saw patients becoming increasingly violent towards the very people that are trying to help them. And then I understood why they needed to teach this course to all health care workers. I actually commend them for introducing the course to all staff before they start working.

Sometimes people let their guard down because hey, we see the patients and say, poor them. They are so weak, I have to help them. Let me tell you, looks are deceiving. The first time I worked in a lock down unit, I saw someone who looked like they needed help to dress for the morning. It was a tiny old woman. As I helped her, she was compliant and friendly. As soon as I bent down to put on her shoes, she gave a swift kick to my chest. I fell backwards, and had the wind knocked out of me. Now I understand that expression "I got the wind knocked out of me" because literally, that's what happened. Thankfully another nurse was nearby and assisted me and got this patient dressed. We had to remind the little old lady that kicking people was not allowed. You may think it's just a slap on the wrist, and it really is. Documentation is obviously necessary. But that's it. I can't deny her food or the washroom to punish her because that would just be inhumane.

Sexual abuse and violence also occurs quite frequently in health care. I remember while working as a student, I did a lot of night shifts on my days off school. I had a 12 hour night shift on one of the units, and nurses had warned me about the patient I was looking after for the night. He had made sexual comments to all the workers that were taking care of him. So they gave me a head's up. He seemed alright when I first saw him. His family came to visit and stay with him and he seemed calm. As soon as they left, that's when all the craziness happened. The attempts to climb out of bed, and the punching. Not only that, but if you were a female, he would try to grab the chest. The first time he tried to do that, I backed off. I remember telling myself, this was going to be a long-ass night, and a very brutal one. They teach you to say stuff like "that is inappropriate sir. Please don't do that again" in school, but when you are thrown into real life situations like this, that sentence doesn't mean jack. Now you might think, why not chemical restraints? Maybe some Propofol or Ativan. The whole point of having a sitter at night is to not use chemical restraints. However, it will be necessary if they go violent all night. I don't remember if he had anything to help him calm down. But I do remember half the night he was trying to climb out of bed. And it was my job to prevent him from falling out of bed. It was difficult already, but to have someone try to sexual abuse you while you try to help them, it takes guts. Giving him a shower in the morning was difficult because it requires you to be close to them. I had to stand about 5 feet away to prevent being grabbed. When the 12 hours had passed, I was thankful to be out of there, but felt sorry for the workers who had to deal with him for the rest of the day.

Abuse occurs in all aspects of nursing, predominantly in mental health. In January 2014, a nurse working for CAMH was brutally beaten by a patient, to the point he was unrecognizable. CAMH was charged, and so was the patient, for assault. The nurse could not return to work because of the injuries sustained. And yet I hear people say, well it's mental health. It's expected and normal for people to beat other people up because they're messed up in the head. No, it's not normal in ANY aspect. Just because they have an illness, it doesn't make it right in any way to go beating people up. No one should be afraid to go to work, and no one should expect to get beaten up at work.

Emergency rooms deal with a lot of violence towards staff. The crazy wait times, the delay in getting an answer fast. I think in this society of constant social media, exposure to violence in movies and being so self centred, our patience runs out pretty quick. If we don't get the answer fast, or the answer we want to hear, the first thing we do is resort to violence and try to hit something. That something is unfortunately the nurse at times. People don't realize that the doctors and nurses in the ER are probably running 12-16 hours (or maybe even more) on a regular day, dealing with many patients, and probably missing their dinner and bathroom breaks, because they want to get you the answers as soon as possible. You might peek around and see them sitting down and chatting, while you're waiting for results and getting pissed off, but what you haven't seen is the previous 10 hours of them running around. That could've been the only time they got to sit down for a few minutes to catch their breaths. So, take it easy. We know you're in pain and we hate to see you in pain. But please don't take out your anger on the people that are trying to help you. Punching them will not help either because you just knocked out 1 staff out of 10. And you just made them short staffed, which means a delay in reporting your results.

I don't want to scare potential future health care workers out there, but there are the goods and bads. They both have to be laid out on the table for you to decide whether it's the right career path for you. There are a lot of stuff that schools don't teach the young ones about what to expect in the real world. A lot of those will come with experience, but hopefully in a safe environment.

Workplace violence should be discussed more in schools. If they are to prepare future generations of front line workers, they should reduce the amount of useless theories taught in all 4 years of the program, and start introducing a course in workplace violence, including a self defence course. It's not to imply you get to beat people up, but it's to protect yourself, and also prevents the patient from harming others. They need to also touch base on the impact of mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse on health care workers. It has become more prevalent and needs to be addressed. They need to stop showing the superficial stuff of nursing, and start emphasizing a pandemic that's hitting hospitals across the nation.