Development of a violence tool in the emergency hospital setting

Violence against nurses is an on-going issue in healthcare settings, and is regularly documented in the literature. Assessing the potential for violence against nurses in the emergency department is essential to maintain their safety. The aim of this study was to develop a violence assessment tool by refining a list of predictive cues identified from both a previous study and existing literature. Using the Delphi technique, a panel of 11 expert nurse academics and clinicians developed a 37-item questionnaire and used three rounds of Delphi to refine the violence assessment questionnaire. The resulting tool comprises 17 cues of potential violence that can be easily observed and requires no prior knowledge of the perpetrators' medical history.