Violence against nurses examined

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/06/2023 (845 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just as a nurse was about to care for the seemingly calm patient brought into the emergency department by police, the patient turned violent and tried to wrestle the officer and take his weapon. Another time, a man snapped and lashed out when it seemed no one was doing anything for his ailing mother.

Violent situations in the workplace — nothing new to front-line nurses — are the subject of a new study by a nurse at the University of Manitoba.

The research project aims to find out how nurses deal with workplace violence, and how they decide whether and how to provide care when somebody is throwing punches or furniture, or spitting or shouting abuse or threats.

“Nurses have to decide every single time,” said researcher Jennifer Dunsford. “They’re faced with those decisions: do I go in and take care of this person? They might need life-saving interventions, but if you know you’re going to get hurt or abused, how hard is it to make the decision about whether you’re going to go in?”

The idea for the research came from her seven-plus years of experience as the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s director for ethics services.

“I would get calls from health-care providers all the time asking for help to help work through the ethical decision-making process of a given situation,” said Dunsford, who’s now a nursing instructor at the U of M.

“Violence or abuse or aggression in practice was probably the most common thing I got asked about by people in long-term care, in acute care settings, in critical-care settings — about ‘How do we manage this?’”

There is no instruction manual for how to manage every type of incident, she added.

“I thought it was really interesting to think about why some nurses are willing to go in and others aren’t or how do you make that decision around, ‘Is this safe for me in this moment to go in and provide care?’ and what’s the difference between now and another time when the right answer is the opposite,” said Dunsford, whose research will include hour-long interviews with up to 30 nurses and is as part of her PhD dissertation.

The nurse-run study is welcomed by Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson, whose earlier nursing experiences include having a patient wrestle a police officer for their gun in the examining room and a family member attacking her.

“People become explosive and then it’s not only providing care to your patient, it’s dealing with a volatile family member or a volatile patient who suddenly erupts. I think what we really need are some really good stats and some really good information on how this is affecting nurses,” she said.

“I’ve talked many, many times in the media and to employers and the government about the effects of violence on health-care workers — on their morale, on their sense of safety and security in the workplace. We really have seen no action from government or employers.”

Employees at Manitoba’s main trauma hospital, Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, are still waiting for the arrival of long-promised institutional safety officers with the authority and training to deal with violent behaviour on the job, the union leader added.

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The program was announced by the province more than four years ago.

Shared Health said Monday work is underway to introduce enhanced security at a variety of health-care sites across the province, with the first institutional safety officers in place early this fall — including at HSC.

“Initial meetings with affected unions who would represent security, including these new roles, were held last week, with more meetings planned to discuss various details of the new designation,” a Shared Health spokesperson said in an email.

“We are in the process of finalizing the job description and determining the classification, which will be shared and discussed with the affected unions.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.