Causes Of Workplace Violence

The term “violence against women” means any act of violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, psychological and sexual harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, that may be either occur in public or private life. [10] Workplace violence in health care facilities is rising in alarm rate and has become a major public problem. Even the health care providers, and hospitals are not exceptions including nurses. [2,3] According to the World Health Organization (WHO), workplace violence is where staffs are abused, threatened, or assaulted in circumstances related to their work and while commuting to and from work, involved explicit or implicit challenges to their safety,

Nurses are more prone to violence because they work as front-line care providers serve in a wide variety of settings caring for individuals or patients who face all types of trauma, suffering, and life-altering events regardless of their conditions. Exposure to violence while carrying out duties adversely affect nurses physically and psychologically and may lead to loss of concentration, inattention to ethical guidelines, making mistakes, absence from shifts, repeated absenteeism, inattention to patients, dislike of job, reduced job satisfaction and refusal to work in stressful wards. Nurse experiencing violence in workplace, may decide to transfer to another section or may give up nursing altogether. Though the prevalence is high, violence among nurses is often considered as a part of job and only three out of ten nurses reports physical violence. [13] This may result in significant additional costs on treatment centers and extra burden in the community. Moreover, the consequences of workplace violence in the health sector have a significant impact on the effectiveness of health systems, mainly in developing countries.

The study also adds, half of the physical violence happened on the evening shift.[3] A study was conducted in Turkey among nurses to find the prevalence and root of sexual harassment, its consequences, and factors affecting harassment. A descriptive survey was done with 622 selected nurses working in eight Ministry of Health hospitals. A questionnaire method was applied that consists of sociodemographic characteristics of participants, types of sexual violence, feelings, the sources and ways to cope with sexual harassment behaviors. The results showed 37.1% of participants had been sexually harassed. Physicians were identified as the main perpetrators of sexual harassment. The most common negative effects of sexual harassment were headache, disturbed mental health function, in-satisfaction in job and the only reactions given by the nurses against the harassers were anger and fear. The coping method used most commonly by the nurses was “Doing nothing” as they think it as a part of the job. About 80% of sexually harassed nurses did not report the incident of sexual harassment to hospital administration. [4] A cross-sectional study was conducted in Iran to identify the factors influencing violence among nurses with a sample of 77 nurses working in three general hospitals. The results showed overall, 83.1 % had faced verbal violence and 22.1 % of the participants had faced with physical