Workplace Violence among Nurses

Abstract

Introduction: Work Place Violence (WPV) is an issue faced by the nursing professionals all over the world. Literature have added strategies for developing insight for addressing the issues from different level.

Methods: A total of 40 original and reviewed articles were searched through electronic databases like Pubmed, Google Scholar and Research Gate. Among them, 28 relevant articles (17 original research & 11 reviewed articles) were selected and analyzed,

Results: After reviewing total of 28 articles, it was extracted that nurses are experiencing different form of workplace violence which includes verbal abuse, physical assault, bullying/mobbing and sexual harassment. Verbal violence is common   compared with physical abuse and sexual harassment. Related to their complex nature of the work, prolong contact with patients and frequent exposure to their relatives' violence related events occurs. Violence is directly related to decreasing job satisfaction, burnout, humiliation, guilt, emotional stress, intention to quit a job, and increased staff turnover. Interventions like Zero tolerance of violence, training for nurses, loby with government for protection, creating open and respectful rights-based organizational cultures, model behaviors leadership and workplace safety plans are needed to protect nurses and provide them safe workplace environment.

Conclusion: A significant proportion of nurses faced varied form of violence at their health facilities with serious impact to their work life. In order to reduce workplace violence multiple interventions such as zero tolerance of violence and workplace protection policy need to be more focused.