Employers must take ‘powerful action’ to protect lone-working community nurses from abuse, those among the profession have urged.
A debate at this year’s Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Congress on assaults on nursing staff and employer accountability spotlighted how community nurses were particularly vulnerable to abuse, especially when travelling and working alone across large rural areas.
Marysia Graffin, community nurse and vice-chair of the RCN district nursing forum, stressed how nurses in the community were facing ‘increasing abuse’, including risks that are ‘hidden, underestimated, or poorly managed’.
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‘Community nurses are alone, navigating non-familiar environments, traveling vast areas alone by car, bike or foot,’ she explained.
She called on employers to ‘take powerful action to protect staff’ and improve communication between different health and care providers.
‘Multi-agency information sharing is critical, community teams are too often the last to know about potential danger, discovering the risk only after the incident has occurred,’ she said.
Ms Graffin also called for more ‘robust policies and clearer guidance’ on managing high risk patients in community settings.
‘Staff want to be empowered for prioritising safety. Staff need to know that they will be supported before, during and after,’ she added.
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More equipment and resources to improve staff safety and prevent a ‘fragmented’ response to abuse against health and care professionals was also needed, she said.
Another community nurse, Zarina Khan, stressed the need for employers to complete sufficient risk assessments before nurses visit patients at home.
‘Community nurses work alone. We work in unfamiliar settings, in patients’ homes. This makes us vulnerable to assaults and requires employers to ensure proper risk assessments, low workers protection and support systems,’ she said.
‘Failure to do this may raise questions of employers’ accountability under the health and safety legislation.’
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The resolution ‘that this meeting of RCN Congress requests RCN Council explore ways to hold employers more accountable in their duty of care to their employees in relation to the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018’, passed overwhelmingly.
The act, first introduced in 2018, covers policy issues linked to attacks on healthcare workers, including community nurses, and defines specific offences on such workers.
