Towards an aggression-free health care environment

Over the past few years, nurses across Canada have participated in surveys that have exposed the previously unspoken issue of nurse abuse. Reports from the registered nurses' associations in Manitoba and Ontario reveal that more than half of all RNs have been physically assaulted in the workplace. In a study of 600 nurses in the Toronto area, fully one-third had experienced some form of abuse at work in the five days prior to the study. A recent Nova Scotia study of more than 400 nurses found that 63 percent had experienced verbal abuse at work in the past year, while 35 per cent had experienced attempts of physical harm and 21 percent had been the victims of a physical attack.