40.2% of Italian nurses declared having suffered verbal or physical aggression in 2023. An increase compared to the 32.3% recorded in 2021-2022. This is what emerges from the survey conducted on a sample of those registered in the Register of the National Federation of Orders of Nursing Professions (Fnopi), for the survey promoted by the National Observatory on the safety of health and social-health professionals of the Ministry of Health. on all categories of healthcare personnel.
The numbers – released on the occasion of the National Day of education and prevention against violence against health and social-health workers, which from 2022 will be celebrated on 12 March – appear much higher than the cases reported to Inail and those highlighted by the Regions. In fact, nurses often do not report or highlight cases of violence. As already noted by Fnopi, those who did not do so behaved in this way because, in 67% of cases, they believed that the conditions of the patient and/or their companion were the cause of the episode of violence; 20% were convinced that they would not receive any response from the organization in which they work, 19% believed that risk is an expected/accepted characteristic of the job and 14% did not do so because they feel able to manage these incidents effectively, without having to report them.
The relevant data that emerged from the 2023 survey – Fnopi highlights in a note – is the number of violence, verbal or physical, that the attacked nurses declared: the average is over 10-12 each over the course of a calendar year, with the necessary differences linked above all to the territory and the department where the professional carries out his activity. 44% suffered from 4 to 10 assaults, 55% from 11 to 20 and 1% more than 20 assaults in a year.
“The aggression – states Barbara Mangiacavalli, president of Fnopi – is the effect of a series of important causes that have their roots in different contexts, including organizational models and some lack of responses that citizens suffer, even if not above all, for the now chronic shortage of staff, which worsens a situation of organizational distress and work stress”.
“Citizens' needs – he observes – are often not channeled towards the most appropriate places. Instead, what emerges is the need to listen, the need to take charge of complex situations, which border on the social welfare sphere. They therefore expect a response from a service, from a structure, which is often not the correct one. It is necessary to invest – concludes Mangiacavalli – so that there are increasingly widespread and well-known territorial services”.
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