In November, the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) released its Emergency Department Violence Surveillance Study, based upon responses to a survey by emergency room nurses that are members of the association.

According to the executive summary of the report, 900 deaths and 1.7 million assaults are attributed to workplace violence in the US each year, but these are just the reported cases. Of course, the actual number of violent incidents isn’t really known, which is a terrifying thought.

As one might expect, the number of these violent incidents is higher in environments where tension and emotions run high, especially in a place like a hospital emergency room. The ENA is aware of this increased threat, and uses the results of this study to track violence against emergency room nurses, as well as how the incidents are responded to.

In this study, the ENA wanted to track specific aspects of violence toward emergency room nurses, including how many of incidents are not being reported, how nurses are expected to report such incidents, how facilities are responding to these incidents, as well as trends in violence against nurses.
 

Some of the statistics the report revealed may surprise you. For example, 55% of emergency room nurses experienced physical violence and verbal abuse during a week-long period in which they worked an average of 37 hours per week. In addition, most of the nurses who experienced these assaults did not file  reports.

What may not surprise you is the fact that if the facility had a workplace violence reporting policy in place, the levels of physical violence and verbal abuse were lower. Also, nurses who reported that their facility management was dedicated to workplace violence prevention were less likely to experience violence. What this shows is that facilities that experience high levels of violence need to take action to decrease these levels, by developing reporting procedures and making violence prevention a priority. These simple steps could work wonders for the safety and well-being of their employees.

In the report, the ENA acknowledges that further research is needed in order to determine the full extent of workplace violence against emergency room nurses, and states that it will continue to collect data in order to address this issue.

Do you work in an emergency room setting? If so, has your workplace taken steps in order to limit the number of violent incidents and make your facility a safer place? Please share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

For more information, read the Emergency Department Violence Surveillance Study in its entirety [PDF].