Blaming the victim: complex (nonlinear) patterns of causal attribution by nurses in response to vignettes of a patient assaulting a nurse.

Abstract

When 60 staff nurses at a Veterans Administration hospital were asked to respond to vignettes in which a nurse is subjected to varying degrees of assault, blaming the nurse was at its highest level in response to the mild assault vignette, rather than to the extreme conditions (no physical contact or severe physical assault). When asked directly who was to blame for the assault in the vignette, not one nurse cited the patient.