Threats of violence and actual violence against nurses are yet to be stamped out in Australian hospital emergency departments, according to the Australian Nursing Federation.

The July 12 stabbing of a Blacktown Hospital nurse highlighted the dangers nurses face in Australian EDs.

The incident comes as ED nurses in the United States begin pushing for broader protections and for hospitals to report violent incidents.

Research from the U.S.’s Emergency Nurses Association, which represents 40,000 ED nurses nationally, found one in 10 ED nurses surveyed last year had been attacked in the previous week.

ANF federal secretary Lee Thomas said research showed nurses who work in EDs, psychiatric units and in aged care facilities are most prone to violent incidents.

“In EDs, people can be frustrated at having to wait for treatment, they are emotional and angry and can often be affected by alcohol or other substances,” she said.

“Sometimes this boils over and it escalates into violence, with nurses becoming the victims.”

Ms Thomas called for a zero tolerance approach to verbal violence or actual physical violence aimed at nurses in hospital EDs and other health settings.

She said strategies must include not only education but a real reduction in violence “by whatever means are appropriate to the clinical setting”.

Ms Thomas said nurses who suffer verbal or physical violence must also be supported and provided with formal and informal counselling by hospital management.

Blacktown Hospital nurse Edith Castro-Rivera, 48, was stabbed in the arms, back and chest by a 39-year-old male patient while she worked at her computer at about 2am on July 12.

It was the second attack on a nurse at the hospital in 10 months. In October last year a nurse working in the psychiatric emergency centre was also assaulted.