Re-framing the Problem of Workplace Violence Directed Towards Nurses in Mental Health Services in the UK: a Work in Progress

BACKGROUND: Research consistently suggests nurses working in mental health settings are more likely to be assaulted than nurses in other settings. AIMS: Belated recognition of the issue in terms of social policy (Elston et al. 2006) has been accompanied by an as yet unexamined contest between conflicting 'frames' of the problem, which this paper seeks to make transparent. METHOD: Frame analysis. RESULTS: Two distinct 'master' frames are discussed: the 'individualizing' and the 'co-creationist'. CONCLUSIONS: The influence of these frames has influenced the nature of responses to the problem but the recent dominance of the individualizing frame is being challenged by the emergence, or perhaps re-emergence, of co-creationism.