According to a report published by the state-run media in Iran, most nurses are subject to some kind of violence, verbal or physical, in the first six-months of their employment. The nurses ranging from 31 to 43 years of age are not only attacked by people accompanying the patients but also by doctors.
Examples of violence against nurses included a doctor’s grappling a nurse’s collar in Tehran’s Heart Hospital, a doctor kicking a nurse in Tehran’s Tajrish Hospital and most recently breaking the left arm of a nurse in Tehran’s Khomeini Hospital when the person accompanying the patient threw heavy folders at the nurse.
The report mentioned the number of nurses in Iran is 50 per cent below international standards, because over half of some 8,000 nurses graduating every year in Iran, are not willing to work in public hospitals and would rather move abroad where nurses enjoy more respect.
(state-run Rouzan news, Aug. 24, 2015)