Violence Against Nurses: What are the Impacts?
Nurses are professionals that are well respected in the community, they are the frontline of patient care, they do the grunt work and are often rather under appreciated. Two recent instances however highlight exactly what they have to deal with. Nurses, from Wyong Hospital on the central coast of NSW and The Royal Melbourne Hospital in Victoria, were held hostage by knife-wielding patients. These cases seem extreme, but they are not isolated. So how common are these violent incidents and how can we work to prevent the violence? The Weekly’s Annie Lewis caught up with Dr Jacqueline Pich, Lecturer in Nursing, University of Technology Sydney to discuss these questions.
