Hi Nader,

One of my students, Klaudia Nalepa, wrote some time ago a Bachelor work about patients' aggressive behavior towards the health service. The research was conducted in one of local hospitals. One of the conclusions is that doctors and nurses often don't know how to behave in such situations. Training is necessary.

If you or somebody else is interested, we may consider conducting international research on this topic.

Dear Piotr,

Good idea!

But I think it is better to train the people who come to hospital emergency departments!

Hello,

The only time I was ever at the receiving end of violence in a nursing career spanning over 40 years was when patients with dementia became usually verbally, but sometimes physically, aggressive. This was years ago, in a hospital for older people, but not all had dementia. My chief concern was not fear for myself, but for other patients who found it frightening or upsetting.

I've witnessed verbal aggression in the GPs' practice, and thought that it was how the patient thought he would get his own way. The member of the healthcare team was a receptionist, not a nurse. But she handled the situation beautifully; I expect that she had received training.

This paper is quite interesting:

Arnetz, J. E., Hamblin, L., Essenmacher, L., Upfal, M. J., Ager, J., & Luborsky, M. (2015). Understanding patient‐to‐worker violence in hospitals: a qualitative analysis of documented incident reports. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 71(2), 338-348.

Article Understanding patient-to-worker violence in hospitals: A qua...

This is the full text:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5006065/

It will be interesting to read further answers to this question,

Mary