Survey of nurses finds 'moderate' verbal abuse

Anyone who has been in the work world for a while knows that now and then, tempers flare and civility suffers. But what if you were subjected to nastiness - insults, yelling, cursing, condescension, humiliating jokes, the cold shoulder - on a constant basis? Assessing the frequency and impact of verbal abuse in nurses' workplaces was one of the aims of the RN Work Project, a 10-year, multistate study of registered nurses' work life, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton. The study was launched in 2006 to better understand and avert nursing shortages, a periodic problem that reflects not only supply and demand, but also social, economic, and technological trends.