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the roles and responsibilities of being the only health professional in the area. This courageous spirit might [does] result in these nurses attempting to minimise the experience of violence and abuse’ (p. 191). The under-reporting of violence towards nurses (Arnetz et al., 2015; Hegney, Plank & Parker, 2003; Roche, Diers, Duffield & Catling-Paull, 2012), including remote nurses is not new (Fisher et al., 1996; McCullough et al., 2012; Opie et al., 2010). Hegney et al.’s (2003) study reported that remote and rural nurses are at greater risk than nurses employed in metropolitan areas of exposure to violence (AIHW, 1998, 2002; Moller, 1994; Perrone, 1999; Tolhurst, Bell & Baker, 1999). They posited that policies for the management of workplace violence are less likely to exist in remote areas. In Opie et al.’s study (2010), 349 very remote nurses stated that in the previous 12 months 79.5% had been exposed to verbal aggression, 31.6% to property damage, 28.6% to physical violence and 22.5% to sexual harassment. Not included in these figures are ‘witnessing … violent incidents that were directed towards remote area nurses’ co ‑ workers, family, friends or other members of the community’ (p. 20). The study’s findings were consistent with other studies (Erickson & Williams ž Evans, 2000; Fisher et al., 1996; Hegney et al., 2006; Jackson et al., 2002; Taylor, 2000). A further reason justifying the importance of robustness, is remote workplace cultures that tolerate verbal abuse, under-report violent incidents, management indifference and failure to acknowledge the risks and effects of violence, necessarily means that to survive in such an environment requires a high degree of robustness (McCullough et al., 2012). ‘A culture of acceptance that verbal abuse is ‘part of the job’ contributes to the risk of violence in that it encourages the ‘context of silence’ that surrounds violence in the