Public Reactions in Online Newspapers to Workplace Violence Against Nurses

BACKGROUND: Nurses frequently suffer from workplace violence, but the public is often not fully aware of the situation because many events are not widely reported. METHODS: This study is an attempt to describe public perceptions of and reactions to reports of incidents of violence against nurses in online newspapers. Articles about such violence in Vietnamese online newspapers published from January to December 2019 as well as readers’ comments on those articles were collected for thematic analysis. RESULTS: Nine assaults were reported in 152 articles, and 367 comments were left in the threads. The analysis found four themes: 1) proposing punishment, 2) showing sympathy, 3) being skeptical, and 4) taking gender into account. In particular, the audience called for stricter punishment of the assaulters and showed sympathy for the nurses. However, commenters’ prior experiences with poor nursing services sometimes made them skeptical about the motivations of the attackers. Additionally, commenters saw the violence as a conflict between a man (assaulter) and a woman (assaultee) rather than between a client and a professional nurse. CONCLUSIONS: In general, the public showed support to nurses. Nurses should take advantage of this support to advocate improved policies and measures to protect themselves from violence at work.