On Nursing Violence: Not the violence metered out to Nurses by the public, or sometimes by the spouses of nurses, but rather the violence forms within the profession. I did a semester on this years ago at Uni, and it was a fascinating study. The violence is usually metered out to young nurses or to fringe dwellers of the trade by way of race or belief or orientation etc and is not usually physical but rather tonal, or task related so that the nurse knows exactly where they belong and don't belong in the organisation. This is done by repetition. This is called 'horizontal violence' and has been, for many decades, a method of control by some managers. As an Agency person I am a fringe dweller. Incident: Overhearing 2 nurse managers at one particularly odious establishment talking about replacing staff on leave... 'well, what we do is just order some Agency nurses for those shifts and as we get closer to the date, we usually find one or two of our own who will do the shifts, so we cancel the Agency staff. Stuff them. It keeps them lean and hungry for shifts. We definitely, absolutely, will need an Agency nurse for Thursday night, but we'll order that later.' Then I got 2 shifts a few days later at that place, and re-arranged my life to meet their needs only to have the shifts cancelled a few hours before each was to begin. Then, come Thursday, a desperate emotional appeal for an Agency nurse to fill a vacancy Thursday night... my response... 'Stuff 'em.' Interesting to see that their are still some of the traditional fuckwit knuckle-draggers who haven't left the Temple yet, and it surprising how young some of them are.