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Nurses working in acute care psychiatry experience high rates of violence perpetrated by patients and their perspectives on these experiences are essential to understand this phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to explore psychiatric nurses’ experiences of patient violence in acute care inpatient psychiatric settings. In this interpretive descriptive study, a purposeful sample of 12 nurses were interviewed to understand how they define patient violence and understand their experiences of abuse within the workplace. Using thematic content analysis, a problem, needs and practice analysis was also conducted. Experiencing patient violence had many perceived negative impacts on nurses, patients and the organization. It was often considered to be part of the job and some nurses struggled with the role conflict between one’s duty to care and one’s duty to self when needing to provide care following a critical incident. Power, control and stigma also influenced nurses’ perceptions and responses to patient violence. In their practice, nurses used a wide variety of interventions to stay safe as well as prevent and manage patient violence. Nurses recommended increased education, support and debriefing, and an improved working environment. Future research should explore a consistent definition of violence, barriers to incident reporting and the creation of best practice guidelines specifically related to patient violence. Understanding the perspectives and experiences of nurses in acute inpatient psychiatry leads to greater knowledge of the phenomenon of patient violence and helps to inform the development of future nursing interventions to prevent and to respond to patient violence, as well as support nurses working within the acute care setting. / Thesis / Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

Social workers tend to find themselves in threatening situations associated with their clients. Threat and violence against social workers is not a new phenomenon but can instead be described as “a part of the work”. When clients turn to social services for help, they are automatically at a disadvantage and in order to receive help they need to submit themselves to a lot of demands. This can lead to a feeling of power impotence and not having power over your own life. If a person has a feeling of not being in power over his or her own life it can contribute to clients apprehending the social system as unfair and the frustration that comes with this feeling can lead to violent acts in hope of regaining the power. Studies also show that violence against social workers is something that is increasing and to deal with this organisations have developed certain guidelines for social workers to follow. The aim of this study is to examine these different guidelines in the organisations and to see how they affect the social worker, the client and their relationship. This study reviews different articles that discuss the issue and the study also reviews the guidelines for tackling this issue in seven different organisations. The result of the study shows that the guidelines contains tools for both organisation and the socialworker to manage threat and violence.The result also shows that the social worker is victimized but at the same time both power and advantage lies in the hands of the social worker.