The real turning point for the nursing figure is linked to the intervention of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), an English noblewoman with a strong religious vocation, the first to whom it is possible to properly attribute the title of “nurse”.  Learn about our cpi certification nursing online course at our cpi certification nursing online course page.

Nightingale made his main contribution to the professionalization of nursing within education. With the aim of raising the social status of nurses, he sensed the fundamental ability to direct and teach others. Taking care of people, their weaknesses and their frailties, is no longer a job, a job, a paid job, but a task, which requires a disinterested and visceral devotion and a great respect for life. 

The strength of active listening and behavioral models are fundamental in this training course. 

It happens, however, that very often, news of nurses being attacked in their workplace during service hours are heard on TV. The same nurses who until recently were considered “heroes or angels of SARS COV-2. Recently at the acceptance of the emergency room of the hospital SS. Annunziata di Taranto there was a form of assault against a nurse. 

The family member of a patient, in fact, addressed screams, swear words, personal offenses and heavy threats to a nurse on duty in the emergency room. The intervention of a security guard stopped the violent verbal assault, but the health worker had to seek treatment from the same emergency room. She had a three-day prognosis for reactive hypertensive crisis and tachycardia. Healthcare workers face harassment, threats and harassment in the workplace to an increasing extent. 

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) defines workplace violence as “any physical assault, threatening behavior or verbal abuse that occurs in the workplace.” 

Acts of violence consist in most cases in events with a non-fatal outcome, i.e. aggression or attempted aggression, physical or verbal, such as that carried out with the use of offensive language. 

The phenomenon is very widespread and does not recognize significant gender or role differences, even if, among all health professionals, nurses seem to be the most exposed because they are in direct contact with the patient and because they have to manage relationships characterized by strong emotions with subjects. who are in a state of frustration, vulnerability and loss of control. 

While representing a rapidly growing phenomenon, the attacks are rarely reported; this attitude is most likely influenced by social role and cultural factors.