Are ER Nurses Getting Abused?

Emergency nurses are beginning to get hurt. Ninety-eight percent of emergency room nurses in the U.S. reported verbal harassment while sixty-seven percent reported physical violence.

In Canada, 84 percent of the nurses in the emergency department saw verbal harassment once in each shift.  Ninety percent of them claimed to undergo verbal abuse at the least once a week. In Australia, 70 percent of the nurses experience violence five times a week at the least.

Emergency room nurses are becoming victims of increasing violence inside emergency departments of hospitals.

A study by the Emergency Nurses Association was conducted and reported 86 percent of all the ER nurses included in the survey experienced some form of violence perpetrated against them while on duty.

In 2005, a report by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics stated that there are 4,000 employees in the hospital that were assaulted while working in the ER. In the very same year, emergency room doctors in Michigan accounted that 28 percent has underwent physical assault while 75 percent underwent verbal assaults.

Patients themselves could easily be the culprits of this violence happening in emergency departments. Drunkenness and long hold up inside the waiting room are primary things that would fire up a patient.

According to on one of the biggest studies created on the issue made in Minnesota on 2004, patients perpetrated nearly all of the physical violence and two-thirds of the verbal torments.

Visitors as well as doctors and other staff members are responsible for the rest of the assaults and harassment. It is entirely possible to undergo aggression from the patient’s family members. If the patient was implied in a traumatic incident, his family members’ anxiety levels may be very high and may overwhelm them.

The really common assaults against nurses some of the times result into severe injury. Typical assaults might include hair pulling, spitting, kicking, hitting, and attack using any available object around. Some incidents have resulted into serious injury. There is an ER nurse who lost her baby when she was kicked in the stomach by a patient.

There are behavioral clues when a patient or visitor is expected to be abusive. Stances tend to be tensed up while their speech is loaded and can be menacing or insistent. Assailants would always drop threats of violence. There are also certain diagnoses connected with violent behavior such as substance abuse, acute organic brain syndrome, acute psychoses, partial complex seizures and personality disorders.

Incidents happening on night shift are more expected to make violent patients. In a study by the University of California at Irvine, violent incidents make up 31.8 percent that occurred between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. and only 13.3 percent of the patient volume was witnessed throughout these hours.

So what are the public doing about this?

Security has been strengthened in hospitals to avoid the intensifying violence inside emergency departments. Unions and nursing organizations are always working to attract the focus and inform the public on this matter. They're also lobbying for a law to increase the penalties against culprits. Programs are currently developed in healthcare institutions to deal with this issue.

Jobs of Emergency Room Nurses

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Emergency room nurses are trained in dealing with disaster and emergency situations. They're in charge of giving preliminary treatment or medication for patients in critical level of their illness and injury. Emergency room nurses are renowned for their efficiency, speed and ability to multitask and give medical care. How does one turn into an emergency room nurse?

Formal training and education is requisite to be an emergency nurse. They must possess the skill to handle basic life support because they're the ones in charge of the patient when the doctor is unavailable. Those interested in becoming an emergency room nurse must be a graduate from a recognized nursing school. Their licenses must be legal and of course, in good standing. Emergency room nurses must be amenable to engage in nursing Practice Act.

An experience in emergency medicine is crucial. One must also develop the power to lead in the thick of crisis. A grade of 80 percent must at least be achieved on competency exams. A recent certification from ACLS or Advanced Cardiac Life Support must also be owned by the soon-to-be emergency nurse. Emergency rooms are certainly fast paced surroundings. There will be physical demands to deal with like lifting 50 pounds more or less, standing and walking for long periods, fine motor skills, bending, leaning and stooping with no hindrance, paying attention to details and working precisely over frequent interruption

There are some emergency departments that require the nurses to have an RN degree. This is two year associate degree program. Further training like the BSN or Master of Science in Nursing might be requisite for supervisory or executive function associated to the emergency department.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics envisioned an increase of over 27 percent in the next decade for ER nurses. The American Association of Colleges and Nursing marked that in 2006 there was a modal understaffing of ER nurses by of 8.5 percent.

There can be 3 kinds of emergency nurses. In the United States, there is a Certified Emergency Nurse (CEN) who is a licensed registered nurse. A CEN has demonstrated technique in emergency nursing. The Certification has a validity of four years and it could be renewed by simply passing another examination or accomplishing 100 continuing education units under the specialty.

Emergency Nurse Practitioners (ENP) are chiefly found in the United Kingdom. They can independently diagnose, assess, investigate and handle a wide scope of common accidents and injuries. ENPs have gone through training in advanced nursing which is entirely medical in nature. Their training includes gathering full medical history and examination, prescribing, x-ray interpretation, suturing and plastering.

Emergency Care Practitioner, found also in the United Kingdom, is a specialist paramedic or specialist nurse who practices in the pre-hospital setting handling emergency problems. The main responsibility of an Emergency Care Practitioner is to diagnose, assess and treat patient in an emergency setting.

Emergency nurses are quite coveted. Healthcare professionals are currently needed in several hospitals particularly in the emergency departments who are undergoing staff shortages.

Shortage of ER Nurses and Health Professionals

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There are numerous hospitals in the United States alone that are going through vast shortages of emergency nurses, registered nurses and other health care professionals.  Roughly about 80 to 85 percent of American hospitals remark shortage while 15 percent convey worry about the serious shortage they're undergoing.

According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, America would need about 2.8 million nurses.  This figured demand will be a million more than the projected turn out of nurses.  The U.S. isn't rapidly substituting nurses at the same pace they're leaving the profession.

The average age of nurses in the U.S. is 45 years old. In the year 2010, and estimated 40 percent of all the working registered nurses is already over 50 years old.  Between 2010 and 2020, the biggest group of registered nurses in the United States labor force would be between 50 to 60 years old.  Along this time, the nursing shortage should be exceeding 36 percent. 

What’s happening to America isn't a unique case.  Numerous nations are also experiencing the same problem.  In Ontario, Canada lost 14,000 of its 81,000 nurses because of retirement last 2004.  Although as early as December 2000, the World Health Organization accounted that Poland was graduating approximately 10,000 nurses yearly.  But the figures dropped down to 3,000. In Chile, only 8,000 are working in the field out of 18,000 nurses in the country.

So what are the steps done by the United States government to address this problem?

In April 2008, Congressman Robert Wexler from Florida presented a bill in the United States House of Representatives. This bill is called F.R. 5924 of The Emergency Nursing Supply Relief Act.  Presently, this bill has 11 co-sponsors. 

This bill allows supplemental visas to be reserved for foreign trained physical therapists and nurses. The H.R. 5924 will save 20,000 employment based visas in each of the next three years for the said nurses and therapists. 

This bill also provides funds to help U.S. Schools of nursing to expand the local supply of nurses using funds coming from the $1,500 fee from those who will be applying for the visa.  This will also launch a three-year pilot program targeted in keeping U.S. nurses in the work force. 

Immigrant visa applicants would have to certify that they don't owe their country of residence any indebtedness that was obtained for their education so that they will be granted the working visa. Both the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration and the American Hospitals Association (AHA) expressed their support for the bill.

Because of visa retrogression, many foreign professionals who wish to work in the United States are turned away. The U.S. government gives only a certain amount of immigrant visas (green card) available every year and these are apportioned amongst the diverse immigrant visa categories.

Lately, there are more immigrants given immigrant visas that are employment-based and has run out of visa numbers which caused temporary backlog or retrogression. The U.S. Bears a waiting list for employment-based visas for nurses, and its nurse education programs refused more than 150,000 certified applicants last year because of deficiency in faculty and clinical space.