Background: Globally, workplace violence toward health care providers is an area of concern. The impact of workplace violence on health care providers is significant. Objectives: The study was conducted to evaluate the prevalence of workplace violence (physical and verbal) among emergency medical services (EMS) workers in Riyadh. Methods: The study used a cross-sectional design that employed a self-administered confidential questionnaire, which was distributed to all emergency medical personnel. A well-structured and validated questionnaire on workplace violence was adopted from the World Health Organization for use in the study. Results: A total of 370 EMS workers responded to the questionnaire. Workplace violence was experienced by 65% of the respondents. Verbal abuse (61%) was the most common type of violence reported. The majority of the attackers were patients' relatives (80%) followed by patients themselves (51%). Respondents younger than 30 reported a higher percentage of violent acts than did older respondents (p = .001, Odds ratio [OR] = 2.5, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] = (1.6, 3.9)). Similarly, those who had fewer years of work experience (≤ 10 years) reported a significantly higher percentage of violent incidents than those who had 10 or more years of experience (p = .001, OR = 3.5, 95% CI = 2.1, 5.6). Only 10% of the victims reported the incident to a higher authority. Common reasons for not reporting the violent acts included feeling that it was useless (56%) and that it was not important (52%). Discussion: The study demonstrates prevalent workplace violence among EMS workers, predominantly in the form of verbal abuse. The rate of workplace violence among EMS personnel is comparable with international figures. Less than half of EMS personnel exhibit knowledge regarding the process of violence reporting. However, workers tend not to report the incidents because they often believe that reporting is useless and/or not important. Recommendation: With a high reported rate of workplace violence among EMS personnel, we recommend national preventive measures and encouragement to professionals to report violent events. We also recommend awareness programs for the identified vulnerable group.

Background Although chemotherapy was first introduced for the treatment of cancer more than 60 years ago, the public understanding and acceptance of chemotherapy is still debatable. To the best of our knowledge, no study has assessed the conversations and misconceptions about chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer on social media platforms among the Arabic-speaking populations. Objective The aim of this study was to assess the types of conversations and misconceptions that were shared on Twitter regarding chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer among the Arabic-speaking populations. Methods All Arabic tweets containing any of the representative set of keywords related to chemotherapy and written between May 1, 2017 and October 31, 2017 were retrieved. A manual content analysis was performed to identify the categories of the users, general themes of the tweets, and the common misconceptions about chemotherapy. A chi-square test for independence with adjusted residuals was used to assess the significant associations between the categories of the users and the themes of the tweets. Results A total of 402,157 tweets were retrieved, of which, we excluded 309,602 retweets and 62,651 irrelevant tweets. Therefore, 29,904 tweets were included in the final analysis. The majority of the tweets were posted by general users (25,774/29,904, 86.2%), followed by the relatives and friends of patients with cancer (1913/29,904, 6.4%). The tweets were classified into 9 themes; prayers and wishes for the well-being of patients undergoing chemotherapy was the most common theme (20,288/29,904, 67.8%), followed by misconceptions about chemotherapy (2084/29,904, 7.0%). There was a highly significant association between the category of the users and the themes of the tweets (χ240= 16904.4, P<.001). Conclusions Our findings support those of the previous infodemiology studies that Twitter is a valuable social media platform for assessing public conversations, discussions, and misconceptions about various health-related topics. The most prevalent theme of the tweets in our sample population was supportive messages for the patients undergoing chemotherapy, thereby suggesting that Twitter could play a role as a support mechanism for such patients. The second most prevalent theme of the tweets in our study was the various misconceptions about chemotherapy. The findings of our exploratory analysis can help physicians and health care organizations tailor educational efforts in the future to address different misconceptions about chemotherapy, thereby leading to increased public acceptance of chemotherapy as a suitable mode of treatment for cancer.

BACKGROUND: Continuous education is vital to update the knowledge of the health care professionals (HCPs) engaged in cancer management. We aim to explore the perspective of the oncology HCPs on oncology conferences. METHODS: A questionnaire was handed to the delegates and faculty of an oncology educational scientific conference in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The questionnaire explored the perspective on the ideal number, duration and the educational value of such conferences. RESULTS: Medical oncologists represented 70.5% of the 78 responders. All responders attended oncology conferences in the preceding year with 24.4% have attended &gt;9 conferences. The educational value of these conferences was rated 7.98/10. Two thirds are satisfied with the frequency of conducted event or desire more. Short (half to one day) meetings are preferred by 66.67% and the mean number of optimum educational events is 5.7 per year. Educational events were highly valued (score &ge; 8/10) as venues to meet colleagues. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that the current frequency and scientific value of oncology conferences and educational events are satisfactory to the majority of the relevant HCPs in the KSA. More CME events of up to one day in duration seem to be desired.