Swearing: its prevalence in healthcare settings and impact on nursing practice

Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing
Teresa E StoneMike Hazelton

Abstract

Despite its prevalence there has been little academic research into swearing, and certainly none on its impact on nurses and nursing practice. Nurses are, of all health workers, most likely to be targets of verbal aggression, and up to 100% of nurses in mental health settings report verbal abuse. The literature contains no reference to the effects on nurses of exposure to swearing. This paper reports the findings of a questionnaire study of 107 nurses working in three clinical settings, which used a mixed methods approach. Participants reported high levels of swearing by patients, 32% citing its occurrence from one to five times per week and 7% 'continuously'; a similar incidence arose across the nursing teams at all sites, but being sworn at in anger by another staff member happened rarely. The study failed to show significant differences in the frequency of swearing between mental health and paediatric settings, but did find gender-based differences in both frequency of use and offendedness. High degrees of distress among nurses subjected to swearing were evident; moreover, respondents appeared to have only a limited range of interventions to draw upon in dealing with exposure to such treatment.

References

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Citations

Apr 11, 2012·Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing·D Stewart, L Bowers
May 15, 2015·International Journal of Mental Health Nursing·Cevher GunencGeoffrey L Dickens
Jul 12, 2016·Nursing & Health Sciences·Fereshteh NajafiMehdi Rahgozar
Aug 19, 2017·Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association·Yan SunMargaret McMillan
Jul 19, 2018·The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews·Sally SpencerIan C Smith
Oct 10, 2013·Nursing & Health Sciences·Alwiena J BlignautHester C Klopper
Sep 10, 2019·Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities : JARID·Rachael E LofthouseWilliam R Lindsay
Sep 29, 2011·Perspectives in Psychiatric Care·Teresa StoneEdward H Clayton

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