We live in the knowledge that the increasingly serious and frequent incidents of aggression and violence against nursing staff cannot be considered mere acting-outs or accidents of the road. Equally clear must be the realization that this phenomenon must be addressed in a systemic way, including through adequate training and preparation of caregivers.

This belief is amply supported by the scientific and professional literature that has been concerned with the topic for years; while acts of violence against operators constitute sentinel events that require the implementation of appropriate initiatives, including training and preventive measures.
Mobbing, insults, threats, harassment, beatings...up to actual physical assaults with the need for hospitalization in an acute setting? Incidents of violence have been on the rise in the health care sector for several years, and nurses are particularly exposed and vulnerable.
The International Labor Organization considers violence and harassment a major threat to the safety and health of workers worldwide. Twenty-five percent of all cases of workplace violence occur in the health care sector. 

Nurses are up to three times more likely to be victims of violence than other health care workers.
A phenomenon that Canton Ticino does not escape. Just recently, the Director of the Cantonal Psychiatric Clinic, Daniele Intraina, in an article in the Corriere del Ticino, pointed to a worrying increase in incidents that have been recorded against social-health workers or patients. Assaults that in 8 out of 10 cases involved patients with a principal or secondary diagnosis of alcohol or psychoactive substance use.

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Starting in 2021, a new module on the prevention and management of violence and aggression in health care has been developed as part of the Bachelor's course at the Haute école de santé (HEdS) in Fribourg. The 3rd year students receive specific three-day training on the following topics: domestic violence, bullying and harassment in the workplace, and violence and aggression by patients or their families. The main objective of these courses is to provide practical tools to prevent and manage violence and aggression. Thus, training in the prevention and management of violence and aggression in nursing has its proper place within the Bachelor's degree program.
SUPSI, for its part, has also created a SAS (Short Advanced Studies) in "Managing Risk Situations in Nursing Settings."

With the aim of providing health personnel with all the tools they need to:

• Identify situations at risk to their own and others' safety in order to reduce episodes of aggression and injury.
• Implement behavioral and relational strategies appropriate to the type of aggression suffered.
• Become familiar with the tool of group technical defusing and debriefing at the end of the at-risk situation.

This training, if offered in concert with the implementation of solutions, logistical-organizational and/or technological at the institutional level, can certainly prevent, control and reduce the risk situations mentioned, as well as the serious episodes of aggression to which health care personnel are overexposed.