Nursing Survey: Violence in the Workplace

[tnbutterfly - Mary]

Many of you have viewed the very disturbing video of a 68 year old male patient in a Minnesota hospital who chased and brutally attacked several nurses with a metal pole from his hospital bed last week. Four nurses were injured. One suffered a collapsed lung, and another a fractured wrist. Police say the man was delusional and paranoid. This behavior was very out of character for this patient as he was not considered a violent person.

This highlights the unexpected dangers health care workers face every day in the workplace. A survey from the International Healthcare Security and Safety Foundation found that 60% of workplace violence occur in healthcare facilities.

Have you witnessed or been a victim of violence in the workplace? Take our survey and share your experiences with and opinions of workplace violence.

[tnbutterfly - Mary, BSN]

Please publish our personal accounts of workplace violence.

There are more than 1100 responses so far. We will publish a summary of the responses as there are too many to list individually. So far there are many recurrent themes.

[tnbutterfly - Mary, BSN]

If you are wanting input from nurses outside of the US please add another option for the final question

If you click on OTHER you can add your location outside the US

[ButterflyRN90, ASN, RN]

I'm unable to input since I'm on mobile.

[Spidey's mom, ADN, BSN, RN]

I didn't answer the survey because I haven't personally experienced violence nor have I seen it when I was working. But I know that it has occurred at our hospital - I just wasn't at work at the time.

We changed the way our ER is structured because it used to have the computers situated so that the person working there would have his/her back to the door . .which is how someone snuck in and attacked one of our medics. Fortunately no one was hurt badly.

I worked in the ER for years and while we saw belligerent folks, on my shift, no one got physically violent.

However, I did see my own mother, who has dementia, attack staff members, scream and yell profanities at them, etc. This was at my hospital but I was just a family member, not the nurse on staff.

I work in a small rural town.