Violence
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The epidemic of violence against
healthcare workers
D M Gates
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No longer silent
S
taggering rates of verbal and phy-
sical violence are documented in
the study by Gerberich and collea-
gues,1 published in the June issue of
OEM, and yet most nurses and other
healthcare workers state that the pro-
blem highlighted by this research is not
new. Although many healthcare work-
ers believe that workplace violence is
increasing, there is a paucity of existing
evidence to support these claims due to
low reporting rates. Gerberich and col-
leaguess’ 15% report rate for physical
assaults against nurses supports other
studies that also found low rates.2 3
Compared to physical assaults, non-
physical violence is documented even
less, although researches such as
Gerberich et al found that the negative
consequences associated with such vio-
lence are substantial. When healthcare
workers are asked why they don’t report
violence they most commonly state that
the incident is not associated with
injury or lost work, reporting is too time
consuming, reporting lacks supervisory
support, and reporting won’t make any
difference. Most incredible, nurses indi-
cate that violence is to be expected. In
the Gerberich et al study, 44% of nurses
do not report physical violence because
it is just ‘‘part of the job’’. An additional
alarming finding from this study is that
only 27% of the nurses perceive violence
to be a problem in their workplace,
even though 13% experienced physical
assaults and 38% experienced non-phy-
sical violence during the previous year.
Unfortunately, these findings suggest
that violence may not be identified as
a problem until there is a critical
incident with cas