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Queensland Nurses and midwives in remote and aged care facilities are exposed to more violence than their colleagues in major cities and more than 1000 had experienced workplace violence in a three-month period, a survey has found.
Your Work, Your Time, Your Life report was presented at the Queensland Nurses and Midwives' Union conference this week in Brisbane to help address issues of workplace violence and staffing issues at aged care facilities across the state.
CQUniversity research fellow Desley Hegney led the research team, made up of a number of different universities and the QNMU, that studied a survey of 2397 nurses and midwives.
It was the sixth study of QNMU members and provided an overview of working conditions and the well-being of a cohort of nurses across multiple sectors, Professor Hegney said.
She said there was a "rising exposure" to occupational violence and a "perceived lack of real action" by managers after 1156 surveyed said they had experienced workplace violence in the three months prior to the 2016 survey, up from 40 per cent reported in 2001.
The study found violence against nurses and midwives was worse in aged care facilities and remote or regional hospitals than in large regional centres or major cities.
"Patients, clients, and residents were the most frequent perpetrators," she said.
"Relatives were more frequently the perpetrators in the Acute Public sector than in other sectors – maybe reflecting the demographics of the patients however, in aged care – public or private – there was very little difference.
"After patients and relatives, doctors and other nurses/midwives were more frequently the perpetrators in the Acute Private sector."
QNMU secretary Beth Mohle said the union, community, health care providers and the public sector needed to work together to "unpack" the various causes of violence.
"Aged care has issues (of violence) with regards to dealing with dementia...and the critical issue for both settings is staff levels and skill mix in those areas," she said.
"In a Brisbane metropolitan hospital, even though it's still issue in there, you have access to security staff and the like...you don't have that in aged care facilities and in rural facilities quite often.
"We are even seeing violence in maternity wards and pediatric wards that are linked to domestic and family violence, that spills over into our healthcare facilities.
"They (nurses and midwives) have the right to go to work and feel safe, no one should go to work with the threat of abuse, physical or verbal."
According to the survey, one quarter of respondents said they felt they couldn't complete their jobs "satisfactorily", with that figure higher in the aged care.
"Everyone is ignoring the crisis that is aged care," Ms Mohle said.
"We have national independent research that was released in December last year that identifies that for the average resident in aged care, there is a deficit of one and a half hours a day.
"There are some aged care facilities that don't even have registered nurse coverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"The levels of staffing numbers...is currently appalling right now and it needs urgent attention.
"What is required is 30 per cent of registered workforce, 20 per cent of enrolled nurse and 50 per cent of personal care attendants...we are nowhere near that."