Nurses in acute care psychiatric settings encounter elevated levels of patient violence, impacting both nursing outcomes and organizational effectiveness. This qualitative research examined psychiatric nurses' experiences of patient aggression in acute care inpatient psychiatric environments. This research used an interpretative descriptive approach, including 17 semi-structured interviews with a targeted sample of 12 Canadian registered nurses who self-reported experiences of patient violence in acute care inpatient psychiatry. We utilized thematic analysis and continual comparison approaches to do the analysis. A problem, needs, and practice analysis was used to organize the comprehensive data interpretation. We looked at thirty-three different cases of patient aggression that the nurses in the study had seen. Nurses said they had been the victims of physical, mental, and verbal assault. Many others thought that patient aggression was "part of the job." Nurses often experienced role conflict between their need to provide care and their responsibility to themselves while delivering care after a violent critical occurrence. Concerns about power, control, and stigma also shaped how nurse participants saw things and how they reacted to aggression from patients. Nurses used many tactics to ensure their own safety and to avoid and manage patient aggression. Nurses agreed that more education, talking about what happened after an incident, and a supportive work atmosphere would help stop patient violence even more. The current results have ramifications for diminishing the obstacles to reporting violent incidents and for formulating best practice standards aimed at mitigating patient aggression in the workplace.