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Workplace violence in nursing

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In our everyday life, ethical issues in nursing practice get a little attention on them. These issues can create stress for the nurses since they find it uncomfortable to address the unethical problems they encounter with their patients as they handle them or take care of them. The ethical issues in nursing practices are increasingly problematic to the nurses themselves in all parts of the world (T. Cheung & P.S.F. Yip, 2017). The nursing goals encompass the protection, promotion, and restoration of the health and well-being of every patient they get to interact with. They prevent illnesses and injury and alleviate suffering in the care of the individuals, families, groups, and the communities that their patients are found in (T. Cheung & P.S.F. Yip, 2017).

Workplace violence is ranked as one of the leading causes of occupational injury in the United States at large. Its significant causes diverse effects on the employees' mental and physical health and their social interactions at work, and their ability to perform on the job they are supposed to do. It results in less apparent effects like caregiver fatigue, injury, or stress which eventually leads to increased medication errors or patient infection risks (T. Cheung & P.S.F. Yip, 2017). The verbal form of workplace violence is reported to occur more than the other forms of violence in a hospital setup. The nurses face emotional exhaustion. This exhaustion is usually brought in by the relationship between the verbal abuse and the perception of the patient’s safety (T. Cheung & P.S.F. Yip, 2017).

There are different types of workplace violence. Type one is the criminal intent. This is where the nurse is held at a gunpoint when she is on her way from work. This is the most common intent violence in nurses homicide. The second type is client-on-worker violence which involves the customer or the client relationship.

An example is when a patient threatens to harm the nurse, especially in the psychiatrist wards (T. Cheung & P.S.F. Yip, 2017). The third type of violence is lateral or what is called the worker to worker violence. This is a type of violence that takes place between the nurse and another coworker. It can be verbal or even sexual abuse. The last type is the personal relationship (T. Cheung & P.S.F. Yip, 2017).

Nurses tend to face complex and persistent violent situations in their place of work in the form of intimidation, harassment, and staking as well as beatings, stabbings and some shootings among many more states of assaults (T. Norris, 2018). These assaults typically affect their job satisfaction and their ability to deliver the best services that they can. The nurses who experience workplace violence suffer from post-traumatic stress symptoms that include distressing emotions, difficulty forming thoughts, and the ability to think clearly. Some even resign from their jobs, abstention, and have job charges (T. Norris, 2018).

Workplace violence includes physical, emotional, and psychological disturbances of the nurses by the nurses. Physical violence causes some physical injuries and sometimes might lead to the death of the nurses. Emotional suffering can lead to depression or stress for the nurses facing the violence (T. Norris, 2018). There are many causes of workplace violence in nursing and the implications of these assaults. One of them includes the home-based settings associated with the risks since the working environment is not easily controlled in environments where their setup comprises robbery, car theft, weapons, and an environment full of drug abuse and family violence. These environments contribute to the workplace violence experienced by most nurses (T. Norris, 2018).

Some hospital environments present with a greater risk of the customer or more patients that have inflicted workplace violence than other settings. The emergency departments and the psychiatric facilities are the most highly ranked places that nurses experience workplace violence. Generally, all the employees that work in the inpatient department settings in the psychiatric are the most vulnerable to target violence than those in the other areas of the hospital (T. Norris, 2018). Nurses exposed to these environments are more susceptible to frequent verbal and physical assault. There is also an association between aggressive behavior and anti-social personality disorder that includes manipulative and exploitive behavior. These behaviors give the nurses frustrations, mistrust, and fear (T. Norris, 2018).

Workplace violence is not part of the job that a nurse is employed to do. We should understand that there are inherent risks that the nurses face with the patients that they care for. They experience behavioral health emergencies, dementia, and other organic complexities, or even the visitors who are under duress and we cannot become complacent (T. Norris, 2018). There should be advocacy for workplace violence in nursing. Advocacy should include; legislation, creating and enforcing facility policies, and the providence of education on the workplace violence with the practice should be an essential strategy. There should be some considerations to be put in place, like the metal detectors and dedicated security personnel (T. Norris, 2018).

Ethical awareness mainly associates with recognizing the ethical implications of all the nursing actions, which is the initial step in the moral act. The healthcare system is complex because of its environment. The nurses need to recognize and address ethical issues as they arise in the hospital setup (L.Hartigan & L. Cussen et al., 2018). This implies that the nurses must first recognize the potential ethical repercussions of their actions to resolve the problems and address their patients' needs effectively. The nursing goals encompass the protection, promotion, and restoration of the health and well-being of every patient they get to interact with. They prevent illnesses and injury and alleviate suffering in the care of the individuals, families, groups, and the communities that their patients are found in (L.Hartigan & L. Cussen et al., 2018).

Awareness of these ethical issues helps nurses take any action and practice in the most ethically acceptable way. If the nurse's step conflicts with their goal or one of the principles, or if the nurse tends to act in a manner that ignores the patient's preferences, then the nurse is said to take a risk unethically (N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016). The awareness entails recognizing the chance that nursing actions could fail to adhere to nursing goals, and by this, they violate the ethical principles. This awareness of the ethical issues helps the nurse take action and practice in the most ethically acceptable way. Even the clinical situations they face while in practice need the most careful consideration of the ethical risks (N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016).

Interprofessional teams, associations, industries, and others should address the ethical issues on behalf of the nation's health and safety, essential to the health well being and the health care workforce (N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016).

The nurses should be given a platform to report ethical issues—like understaffing or when they face constraints. The nurse managers and the executives have a particular obligation to ensure that the direct care nurses are empowered to identify and engage in these ethical situations (N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016). All nurses are always responsible for the contribution to a moral environment in the health care system. There is also the need for continuing education. Nurses should be given an education about the principles of documentation and competence in specificity. The guidelines and the best practices of confidentiality and privacy should also be given to the nurses to know how to handle the different issues on privacy and privacy matters(N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016).

Nurses are often exposed to various forms of workplace violence; verbal abuse, physical violence, sexual harassment, and verbal threats. The prominent people who cause these forms of violence are the patients and the relatives of the patients. There is always a need to sensitize the nurses on workplace violence and provide them with job training on workplace violence. They should establish a straightforward reporting procedure and the consequences for the people causing the violence to mitigate this violence (N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016). It is necessary to establish a safe workplace for the nurses and clear and comprehensive mechanisms to support these nurses who have had experiences in workplace violence. Implementing the existing laws and the workplace policies should contribute to safe working environments for the nurses (N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016).

It has been reported that it is hardtop eliminate workplace violence in nursing. Therefore, there should be interventions required to mitigate the impact of violence, and we should also have the interventions to reduce the rates of workplace violence in nursing. The hospitals should have incident reporting systems(N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016). These systems should strengthen the nurses' resilience, which acts as a buffer against most nurses' emotional exhaustion. This can be effective since the strategies will minimize the potential threat of workplace violence to patient safety (N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016).

Nurses should be protected from any form of violence. This is mainly achieved by the hospitals they are working in. they should take the nursing violence cases seriously and report them to the proper officials. They should have training programs that help train the nurses on the best way to act in violence and handle post-violence. Nurses should be encouraged continually to help them in the exhaustion they might have in their profession (N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016). In conclusion, ethics provides a good understanding of human behavior and decision-making at large. To help the implementation of ethics in the nursing practices; we should support the nursing code of conduct of ethics, we should offer ongoing education on the nursing ethics, we should create an environment where the nurses can speak up on the ethical issues they are going through, they should be able to bring the different disciplines they have together (N. Demirsoy & N. Kirimlioglu, 2016).

References

Cheung, T., Lee, P. H., & Yip, P. S. (2017). Workplace violence toward physicians and nurses: prevalence and correlates in Macau. International journal of environmental research and public health, 14(8), 879. https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/8/879

Norris, T. (2018). Workplace violence among nurses and nursing assistants in Texas. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/5510/

Hartigan, L., Cussen, L., Meaney, S., & O’Donoghue, K. (2018). Patients’ perception of privacy and confidentiality in the emergency department of a busy obstetric unit. BMC health services research, 18(1), 1-6. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12913-018-3782-6

fer Demirsoy, N., & Kirimlioglu, N. (2016). Protection of privacy and confidentiality as a patient right: physicians' and nurses' viewpoints. https://www.biomedres.info/biomedical-