Nurses’ educational needs when dealing with aggression from patients and their families: a mixed-methods study

Abstract

Objectives To explore the type of education needed for nurses when dealing with aggression from patients and their families.Design A two-phase sequential mixed-methods study.Setting This study was conducted in Japan, with phase I from March to November 2016 and phase II in November 2018.Main outcome measures The challenges faced by nurses when dealing with incidents of aggression from the neutral perspective of neither nurse nor patient/family and perceptions of the educational contents developed in this study. Descriptive analyses were used to examine the data retrieved from both phases.Participants Phase I entailed semistructured interviews among 11 neutral-party participants who observed aggressive incidents between nurses and patients/families. Phase II consisted of a web survey conducted among 102 nursing students and 308 nursing professionals.Results Phase I resulted in the identification of the following five main educational components: understanding the mechanisms of anger and aggression, maintaining self-awareness, observant listening, managing the self-impression, and communicating based on specific disease characteristics. Each component was related to improved communication through self-awareness. The results of phase II indicated that participants positively perceived these educational contents as likely to be effective for dealing with aggression from patients/families.Conclusions This study clarified the type of education needed for nurses when dealing with aggression based on multiple viewpoints. Specifically, neutral-party interviews revealed that communication should be improved through self-awareness. A subsequent survey among nurses and nursing students showed that the identified educational contents were positively received.