Violence at work: determinants & prevalence among health care workers, northwest Ethiopia: an institutional based cross sectional study

Abstract

Background Workplace violence is the intentional use of power, threatened or actual, against another person or against a group, in work-related circumstances, that either results in or has a high degree of likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, mal development, or deprivation. The aim of this study is to assess magnitude and predictors of workplace violence among healthcare workers in health facilities of Gondar city. Methods Institutional based cross sectional study design was employed to conduct this study. The study conducted in Gondar town from February 21 to march 21, 2016. Five hundred fifty three health care workers selected from health facilities of Gondar City administration. A stratified sampling technique was used for selecting the study subjects through simple random sampling. Data was collected by structured self administered questionnaire which is adapted from ILO/ICN/WHO/PSI after it is pretested & prepared in Amharic. The data was coded and entered in to EPI info version 7 and exported to SPSS version 20 software for analysis. The degree of association for variables was assessed using odds ratios with 95% confidence interval and p -value ≤0.05. Results The prevalence of workplace violence was found to be 58.2% with [95% confidence interval (CI): (53.7, 62.3)] in which verbal abuse 282(53.1%) followed by physical attack 117(22.0%) and 38(7.2%) sexual harassment. Working at emergency departments [AOR = 3.99,95% CI:(1.49,10.73)], working at shifts [AOR = 1.98,95%, CI: (1.28,3.03)],short experiences [AOR = 3.09,95% CI: (1.20,7.98)], being nurse or midwife [AOR = 4.06, 95% CI: (1.20,13.74)] were positively associated with workplace violence. The main sources of violence are visitors/patient relatives followed by colleagues and patients. Conclusion workplace violence is major public health problem across health facilities and the Ministry of Health should incorporate interventions in its different health sector development & management safety initiative.

Gender Based Violence against Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cross-Sectional Studies

“…One of the unexpected findings among health care providers was the highest prevalence rates (53%) of emotional violence and lowest prevalence rates (5%) of physical violence being reported in Ethiopia [100]. This high prevalence of emotional violence may be related to less satisfaction of service users due to long waiting times and less experienced health workers working in the health facilities.…”

“…The majority of health care providers in the studies were females and this may be a reflection of gender inequality in the work areas. Most importantly, there is a lack of violence tracking or reporting mechanisms when it occurs among service providers, specifically focusing on emotional violence in the health care system [100,107]. Alternatively, the low prevalence of physical violence may be due to nurses having an understanding of the local context of GBV and being more likely to notify cases that would prevent perpetrators committing acts of violence [9,11].…”

Assessment of Workplace Violence among Primary Healthcare Workers in Enugu Metropolis

“…Table 3 also reveals that 12(12.6%) of respondents acceded that working alone in shift has effects on WPV experience, while 83(87.4%) respondents said that it has no influence on workplace violence experience. In the same light, Yenealem et al [16] listed shift work among factors responsible for WPV in the health sector. Also, out of the 65 health workers who indicated the time of occurrence of WPV, most 17 (26.2%) health workers are of the opinion that they experienced WPV at 07:00h to before 13:00h.…”

The magnitude and determinants of violence against healthcare workers in Pakistan

“…This finding is also consistent with previous studies in hospitals of Italy, China, Bangladesh and Ethiopia. [25][26][27][28] Among the different types of HCWs, in comparison with administration staff, security guards were significantly more likely to experience verbal violence in tertiary care hospitals, while the chance of occurrence was uniformly distributed between doctors, nurses and technicians. Understandably, guards are the first point of contact, which puts them at higher risk.…”