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Recognising, Responding and Resisting Violence
A critical challenge for nurses
Debra Jackson
Professorial Fellow, School of Nursing, Family and Community Health, University of Western Sydney, NSW
Anne McMurray
Murdoch University, Mandurah WA
Article Text
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967:62-63)
Martin Luther King's thoughts about violence are as relevant today as they were nearly 40 years ago when he wrote them. It seems oddly synchronous that his widow, Coretta Scott King passed away the very week that we sit to write this concluding piece to our special edition. Coretta Scott King was the founding President of the Martin Luther King Centre for Nonviolent Social Change. Despite the profound effect that violence had on Mrs Kings' life and the lives of her children, she herself refused to become a victim to violence, and came to embody qualities of gentle dignity, strength, courage and great determination. Following the death of her husband, Mrs King worked tirelessly for the rest of her life to promote the philosophy of nonviolence first articulated by her husband in 1957 (http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/encyclopedia/king_coretta_scott.htm ).
However, in the 21st century, violence is a part of our everyday world. We each live with violence or the constant threat and fear of violence. Whether or not we like to admit it, violence affects our day-to-day lives. No-one is untouched by it - it influences our behaviour, shapes the way we live and threatens our very way of life (Walker 2006). There are many types and degrees of violence, and while some forms are obviously less traumatic than others, all violence is subversive to the social justice agenda that lies at the heart of our world and our profession. Violence erodes civil society. Even the rhetoric of violence permeates our social mores, transforming human beings into victims, potential victims and perpetrators.
Whether or not we are directly affected by a particular act of violence, its indirect impact on our lives is profound. How many of us sit in horror watching the television news as yet another violent crime is discovered, another beaten body found, another family left numbed by the shock of sudden violent death, another community shattered by the effects of violence and brutality. At times we can sit back complacently and think that acts of this type happen to other people - they would not happen to us, not to our family, not to our friends. However, in a world where it seems that many more people are affected by random acts of violence (their only fault being that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time), something as simple as an outing to the beach, a visit to the shopping mall, or taking the train to work becomes complicated by the fear of violence.
Although anyone can be confronted by violence anywhere and anytime, nurses encounter violence and its effects in their day-to-day work perhaps more than any other occupational group (Luck et al 2006). Not only do we experience violence and aggression through our work, it is often our role to help repair the broken bodies and heal the spirits of those experiencing violence and those who care for them. In the longer term, we are also closely involved over long periods of time with those who sustain lasting damage and hurt as a result of experiencing violence. Nurses also work with perpetrators of violent acts, and can be challenged to establish therapeutic and helpful relationships with persons who have committed heinous acts.
The papers in this collection reinforce the importance of being able to recognise violence and see violent acts (no matter how subtle) for what they are. The insidious nature of violence, and the way that it is ingrained in our day-to-day lives, often means that we become desensitised to it. When this occurs, it is possible to experience varying degrees of violence and aggression as a normal part of everyday life. Before we know it, we can be experiencing violent acts or become trapped in violent or abusive relationships and situations. Power et al (2006) refer to the need to recognise cues for violence. Their participants did not recognise important cues at the time they were experienced, but in retrospect, certain behaviours and events can clearly be identified as precursors to violence. Within an organisational context, Hutchinson et al (2006) suggest us that acts of violence and aggression can masquerade as legitimate workplace processes. This can mean that unacceptable behaviours become masked as legitimate and adopt a cloak of acceptability.
Part of the very real value of a forum such as has been provided through this special issue is that it has created a space for nurses to engage in dialogue about violence, how it intersects with nursing and health, and how we can move forward. Writing in 2003, the General Secretary of the NSW Nurses' Association, Brett Holmes called for nurses to become part of the solution to violence, to make 'positive contributions to finding solutions, healing victims and perpetrators and, in so doing, make the world a better place' (Holmes 2003:5). In some ways nurses have begun to do that. As the papers in this collection reveal, as a discipline, we continue to examine the issue, and seek new ways of knowing and understanding violence.
We seek to explore the many ways that violence can manifest, to recognise the cues and precursors for violence, to understand the lived experience of violence, to have an awareness of violence as something that affects people in many ways, to appreciate the needs people have in recovering from the effects of violence, to develop and enact roles for nurses in helping reduce violence and helping people and communities heal from acts of violence. This is a milestone in the study of violence. We consider it a call, not to perpetuate cycles of violence, but to better understand the magnitude and nature of violence in its different forms, to build a base of knowledge beyond the public discourse of violence, to recognise the way all forms of violence excludes, marginalises and discriminates. In documenting these studies it is our sincere expectation that this volume will have an impact on nursing practice and will inspire extension of this field and the base of evidence that informs it.
References
Holmes B (2003) Standing up to the many faces of violence, The Lamp, 60(7):5.
Hutchinson M, Vickers M, Jackson D and Wilkes L (2006) 'They stand you in a corner; you are not to speak': Nurses tell of abusive indoctrination in work teams dominated by bullies, Contemporary Nurse 21(2) (in press).
King ML (1967) Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? HarperCollins Publishers, New York.
Luck L, Jackson D and Usher K (2006) Survival of the fittest, or socially constructed phenomena? Theoretical understandings of aggression and violence towards nurses, Contemporary Nurse 21(2) (in press).
Power C, Kralik D, Koch T and Jackson D (2006) Lovestruck: Women, romantic love and intimate partner violence, Contemporary Nurse 21(2) (in press).
Walker K (2006) Alert but not alarmed? The rhetoric of terrorism and life after 9/11, Contemporary Nurse 21(2) (in press).
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