Rural Emergency Department Nurses’ Experiences with Workplace Violence

Abstract

Purpose: Workplace violence (WPV) includes acts or threats of physical violence along with harassment, intimidation, or other threatening disruptive behavior that occurs at the worksite.WPV, especially in the emergency department (ED), is often underreported as many nurses consider violence inevitable and a part of the job. There is a perception of a lack of consequences when reporting, and lack of support from organizational administration. Most of the research on WPV has occurred in urban settings and research in rural hospitals is limited. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of rural South Dakota ED nurse's experiences with workplace violence.Sample: Ten registered nurses employed at Critical Access Hospitals across SD participated in the interviews. Years of experience ranged from 2 to 25 years. Methods:A descriptive, phenomenological approach with snowballing technique was utilized.Interviews were conducted independently with each participant. Participants were asked to respond to five pre-determined questions. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed for themes.