Thirty percent of Australian nurses say they were the targets of verbal and physical abuse during the last four work weeks. Nearly a third of the 2,407 nurses who took part in the study reported being subjected to both physical and verbal abuse and a quarter said it was so bad they considered quitting their jobs.
Two-thirds of the nurses reported some form of abuse during the four week period, said the survey led by the University of Tasmania and supported by the Australian Nursing Federation.
The abuse ranged from being sworn at, slapped and spat upon to being bitten, choked and stabbed. The abused nurses, who all worked in Tasmania, reported an average of four verbal incidents and between two to three physical incidents.
Sixty-nine percent who had been physically abused had been struck with a hand, fist or elbow and 34 percent were bitten.
"We also discovered that 6 percent had been choked and just under 1 percent had been stabbed," said lead author Professor Gerald Farrell of the La Trobe University School of Nursing and Midwifery.
The study appears in the Journal of Advanced Nursing.
Source: United Press International
