Why do some people think it is okay to rage at nurses?

23 October, 2010 | By Mark Radcliffe

A student nurse was telling me recently about being chased around a desk by an angry visitor. She explained that she didn’t know him and had never spoken to him before.

She hadn’t been working with his mum, whose care he considered substandard, and she had no idea why he started to shout at her.

She did the right thing: it being a ward environment, she calmly asked him to not shout as he was likely to disturb or unnerve the patients. He perceived this as an assault on his God-given right to be a twerp and shouted louder. He began walking toward her and she felt threatened. She took a step back, he walked quicker. Before she knew it, she was running around the desk backwards being followed by a lurching, shouty relative who looked like a cross between Freddy Krueger and Benny Hill.

Eventually a senior nurse intervened. Half the man’s size, she stepped in front of him and said calmly and firmly: “You are chasing a student nurse around my ward; it is unhelpful and alarming. Stop.”

‘Something ugly and bizarre has happened over the last 20 years. A part of the population has grown to think it is OK to rage at nurses. To shout, punch, spit or threaten’

It made me think of my own brushes with uncontained anger in nursing. A very angry man who wanted me to give him some unprescribed drugs threatened to stab me for being a “lanky poof” once and I had a student nurse who, on being told he wasn’t going to pass his competencies unless he spent some time doing some nursing, actually jumped up and down in unbridled rage. But in the main, I’ve been lucky. I have not been hit, kicked or spat at. Threatened yes, insulted yes and shouted at a few times - but haven’t we all? Isn’t that, well, normal?

Something ugly and bizarre has happened over the last 20 years. A part of the population has grown to think it is OK to rage at nurses. To shout, punch, spit or threaten. Nurses were once universally respected but either they have shifted in the national consciousness or a significant section of the population has lost its self respect or self control.

Is that about a change in nursing? Is it about the ideological shift from working with patients to dealing with customers? Is it about the politics of consumer rights triumphing over the need for individual responsibility? Or is it about a simple lack of respect?

Whatever it is, with the current climate of resentment around public service - how dare you have a career, the possibility of professional fulfilment and a pension! - it is hard to see how we are going to imbue the darker elements of the population with a civility that seems beyond them.

So I wonder if, given this government’s readiness to clamp down on people who take advantage of the “system” by fiddling benefits, they might extend this sense of fairness to people who attack nurses? Fining them doesn’t seem to work so what about limiting their access to treatment? Or refusing them access to anything but emergency services and forcing them to buy health insurance? Too harsh? In these times of austerity I wonder - could it be the only way we will stop certain parts of the community from thinking that nurses can be treated as punchbags?

Readers' comments (76)

Anonymous | 23-Oct-2010 1:52 pm
How about calling the police and having them charged with harassment?
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dino-nurse | 23-Oct-2010 2:02 pm
This was the main reason that I eventually left A&E for the ICU. I do feel that it is not so much to do with a lack of respect for nurses as more a feeling of entitlement by certain sectors of society. This sense of entitlement breeds an arrogance that allows joe public to shout and punch ( and yes I have been punched and spat at) until he/she gets his/her own way. Its not just medical personnel who are abused like this, its the whole public sector...I have a friend who works in the local DHS office who was beaten up by a man who had had his benefits stopped- he broke her jaw but was never taken to court as he was deemed to be mentally ill. Oh and they gave him back his benefits. I also have friends who are teachers that get shouted at by parents on a daily basis. Please don't shout me down as being anti- benefits, I am not. What I am against is the attitude that because the NHS is free people can treat those of us who work for it like s**t and then moan about how unfair it is that we get paid for a living. Oh and don't forget the "my taxes pay your wages" brigade. They barely give nurses a living wage.
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Anonymous | 23-Oct-2010 2:13 pm
purchase of compulsory healthcare and accident insurance works in Switzerland extremly well. it is part of the annual family budget and excellent service is provided in return. there is competition between the insurance providers and one can change insurers at the end of every year to one which is cheaper. additional optional complementary insurances are also available but the most important things are covered by law in the basic insurance which is the same for every provider. in order to keep premiums low for those who do not make many claims there are different levels of franchise. Ten percent of all medical bills are the responsibility of the patient but only up to a maximum amount which is fairly low and after which the insurance covers. this seems a much better solution than the failing nhs where there are so many differences in diffeent areas to the standards of care and waiting times for treatment. there is a free choice of which doctor you consult so you may go directly to a specialist and waiting times are very short and sometimes non-existent even for planned treatment. for those who wish to keep their premiums lower there is the choice of the gp model which means patients always have to consult with their own gp before going for any other treatment or visiting a consultant, there is a managed care model where the patient is managed by the gp responsible and a team which provide other care required or there is a telephone model where patients have to phone a call centre manned by doctors before they can visit any doctor.

as regards the story above, the potential danger to nurses really makes me cringe as the nurse could have been entirely on her own against this visitor. running backwards around a table she could have fallen and broken bones or hit her head and one's imagine could run riot. what an experience for anybody to go through and especially when they had done absolutely nothing to promote such a situation.
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Anonymous | 23-Oct-2010 5:13 pm
Nurses who are not well equipt with information about the patients under their care should stop parading themselves in open patient areas. It is an expectation that nurses read patients records to ensure they do not appear stupid when confronted by visitors. Being a student nurse is not a licence not to communicate properly. Most visitors are anxious about their relatives as such they appreciate kind words and a willingness to refer them to somebody who can help. One of which could be the security team. Where has communication Communication gone? And what about prioritising nuses activities? I have observed visitors kept waiting by nurses who engaged in bickering about other professionals to the hearing of the waiting visitors. Nurses need to visit healthcare setup outside their uniforms to appreciate why most visitors target them. On the other hand, there are other group of nurses who spend more time nanning the visitors to the detriment of their professional duities. Public image of nurses urgently needs revisiting.
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Anonymous | 23-Oct-2010 8:00 pm
I don't give a monkies how relatives perceive nurses or what knowledge people think a nurse should have about their patients.
It does not give them any right to chase the nurse, threaten the nurse or anything else.
If the assistant in Asda doesn't know the price of something it might be annoying but doesn't give me the right to smack them one
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Anonymous | 23-Oct-2010 8:02 pm
There has been a far too wide sweep to the relatives and patients rights in The NHS. Which may also explain why The NHS is in such a mess in every way.
Relatives do not have the right to set about the nurses any more than the nurse has a right to set about an irritating patient. Do they?
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Anonymous | 23-Oct-2010 9:04 pm
i thought human rights were supposed to be equal for all - that brings us back to Orwell's 'Animal Farm' where all animals are equal but obviously some are more equal than others!
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Anonymous | 23-Oct-2010 9:16 pm
What is Anonymous 23/10/10 at 5.13pm on about?
"Nanning"???
What if you are new to the ward and only just come on shift and some well meaning NOK starts having a go at you? You should have read all 27 sets of notes before your shift starting?
Agree totally with the Asda comment, nothing gives somebody the right to chasing a student around the desk - I have been in NOK situations myself but I would not dream of behaving as some members of the public do.
It would be better if we stopped knocking ourselves as well as students, that would be professional behaviour.
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Anonymous | 23-Oct-2010 10:34 pm
Why are the relatives annoyed in the first place?! Should we try sorting that first?
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Anonymous | 24-Oct-2010 0:13 am
As a lifelong public servant in one capacity or another, I have come to the sad conclusion that there are a great many nasty, evil people with whom I share this beautiful planet who do not deserve to be cared for by, who in the main are caring and hardworking nice people. I have been spat at, assaulted, seen colleagues threatened and I have been hospitalised following a nasty assault. I only speak how I find and that is my story. I do not like people, I do not trust people, nursing is just a job to me. And yes, I do have a nice pension to look foreward to, but I have damn well earned it and I deserve it.
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Anonymous | 24-Oct-2010 1:06 pm
Yes, just quite what is anonymous at 5.13pm on 23rd actually on about?! Perhaps this is in fact one of the people who sees no fault at all threatening anyone to get what they want. From one negative experience they have the nerve to jump onto a nursing discussion to knife the entire profession?! A marvellous representation of the public sector who make nurses lives a misery.

I didn't become a nurse so I could have a good argument. Sadly however I have encountered this behaviour in all previous employment. Shame the war generation have nearly gone, leaving a society littered with ungrateful, selfish meanies. At 26 I'm quite disappointed.
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Anonymous | 24-Oct-2010 2:01 pm
why is this allowed to happen and what is being done about it? it is up to the government to put measures in place to protect staff and vulnerable patients and visitors from aggressive and violent patients.
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Anonymous | 24-Oct-2010 4:07 pm
I too couldnt care less what a visitor thinks the nurse should or should not know, I totally agree with the other reader with comments of not knowing something in thier job which isnt life threatening. Why do people think they should have the right to have a go at nurses. I have personally never had physical abuse from a visitor but have been shouted at, punched, kicked and bitten, spat at and scratched where it drew blood through my tunic (I was writing notes at the time at didnt see it coming) all from patients. And I wasnt working in mental health! Yet still it has to be said that old adage of "its not the patients fault its thier illness" so nothing is done. Why then are they ususally happy when visitors are present and not violent or abusive? Needless to say I wasnt cut out for this sort of career and left the wards. If I trained as a police officer Id would probably got a medal or some form of compensation, yet as a nurse, its expected that you put up, shut up and carry on regardless.
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Anonymous | 24-Oct-2010 6:17 pm
One of my colleagues actually got grabbed by the hair and had her face smashed against the wall. she was subsequently off-sick for several months and never regained her confidence. She did not have TIME to even CONSIDER the problem.
It is totally unnacceptable that people can behave in a violent or abusive manner and get away with it. If someone was attacked in the street, then the perpetrator would be arrested straight away.
What a terrible thing to happen to a student nurse (well any nurse for that matter)....it's the sort of thing that could put her off continuing with her career.
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Anonymous | 24-Oct-2010 7:27 pm
free healthcare, cheap labour from highly qualified, highly skilled experienced staff and licence to insult them and beat them!
What does all this mean and what does it show about our fellow citizens and the country we live in?
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Anonymous | 25-Oct-2010 10:02 am
My experiences of being shouted at, sworn at and attacked have been mercifully small as I was always ward based and not in the 'firing line' of A&E. A colleague was not so lucky - he was glassed in the face as a student and bears the scar now. His assailant was not pursued for prosecution. I am aware of a patient who is escorted to and from their hospital and observed by security WHILST they are being treated because they are threatening to the Nursing staff. Why do we continue to treat this person?

I can forgive the ill and confused on the whole. I cannot forgive the mean and the offensive and the downright nasty in some cases. Barmaids get better treatment than we do - if you are oofensive to bar staff you are asked to leave by the Landlord and usually thirsty as a result of the lack of common manners.

When will the public and our own Unions and employers step up to defend us? Why are we not permitted to defend ourselves?
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Anonymous | 25-Oct-2010 10:52 am
I have worked all over the UK and the Middle East and Australia over the last 20 yrs and cannot believe how relatives and visitors speak to nurses in the UK. I am now in Australia and get spoken to with respect and treated courteously. Why would I want to return to that atmosphere and be spoken to like dirt. good riddence
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Anonymous | 25-Oct-2010 11:09 am
rudeness and attacks on nurses is rare in mainland European hospitals unless there is a clinical reason for it such as mental health disorders concerned with impulse control in which case they should be dealt with appropriately and adequately and by assessing risk without putting the onus on the patient.
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Anonymous | 25-Oct-2010 8:11 pm
And who is to blame for this 'raging' at nurses?

Those who for too long have regarded it as acceptable.....ward managers, chief execs, police, lawyers and the crown prosecution service.

We now have zero tolerance and it should be adhered to in all cases.

There is no excuse for rude behaviouir by patient's or relatives. It is up to managers of all levels to make this so.
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Anonymous | 26-Oct-2010 1:26 pm
When your young and drunk you can do what you like to anyone, especially in A&E, and it doesn't make any difference how many times you intimidate, abuse, harm or murder [oops sorry, manslaughter - if you follow your briefs advice and plead guilty to the lesser charge] you can be back on the streets enjoying yourself as soon as the magistrates can get you out the court room. People will be able to do what they like to nurses - they've got human rights on their side, Oh didn't you know? the human rights act doesn't apply to people working on the 'coal face' within the public sector.
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