Workplace Violence against Nurses Working in Emergency Departments at Public Hospitals Lahore

Abstract

Background: Work place violence is an alarming and devastating issue worldwide particularly in the emergency departments.
Incident of work place violence is common towards nurses in health care settings. Nurses are more prone to workplace violence due to lack of respect towards nursing profession in Pakistani society and the nature of work performed by the nurses.
Objective: The main purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of work place violence including physical and non physical and bring awareness about work place violence among nurses at the emergency departments of health care systems.
Methodology: A cross sectional descriptive survey was performed to assess the prevalence of work place violence at tertiary care hospitals of Lahore. A convenient sample of n = 147 was used to collect the data. A structured standardized adopted questionnaire was used to collect data. The questionnaire consisted demographic, physical and non physical variables. The data was collected from Jinnah and services hospital Lahore. The data was analyzed on SPSS version 21.
Results: It was found that 77.55% stated that they are not exposed to physical violence last 12 months, 13.6% said once, 7.48% said 2-3 times and 1.3% stated they have been exposed 4-5 times during last year. On the other hand the participants exposed to Nonphysical violence in last 12 months,12.93% stated that they are not exposed to physical violence last 12 months, 25.85% said once, 40.82% said 2-3 times and 19.73% stated they have been exposed 4-5 times during last year.
Most recent physical incident in which 10.20% of incidents were happened at resuscitation room 2.04% at waiting room and 10.20% in treatment room. The most recent nonphysical incident in which 38.10% of incidents were happened at resuscitation room 0.68% in triage 12.24% at waiting room and 37.41% in treatment room 0.68% in other places.
Conclusion: The physical violence prevalence was found less that the nonphysical violence, but Physical violence is more threatening than the nonphysical violence.