Epidemiology of workplace violence against nursing staff in Ismailia Governorate, Egypt

Violence against health care workers (HCW) or workplace violence in general is a major problem affecting health and productivity of HCWs.

To determine the prevalence and nature of workplace violence against nurses in Ismailia governorate, Egypt, and to identify its risk factors and how nurses manage it.

Cross-sectional study, using a questionnaire for data collection, which includes demographic data, characteristics of workplace violence events, and risk factors contributing to workplace violence. All nursing staff in four hospitals and twelve Primary Health Care (PHC) Centers, randomly selected from Ismailia city were recruited. Out of 1600 distributed questionnaires, a total of completed 970 were returned (a 55% response rate).

269 (27.7%) of nurses reported abuse of any kind, 187 (69.5%) verbal abuse; and 25 (9.3%) physical abuse. Males were more exposed to violence events during the past 12 months than females (35.3% versus 24.2%, p<0.05; OR=1.71). Being single posed no higher risk of exposure to violence than being married (34.8% vs 31.2%, p = 0.083). Changing shifts to night time had a higher odds for being assaulted than working a morning shift (p=0.002, OR=1.58). Working in a place crowded with colleagues was not protective and had a higher odds of being exposed to violence than working with low number of colleagues (p<0.001, OR=2.77). The patients were the perpetrators in 62.8% of violence events, while their relatives committed 16.7% of events. Only 7.4% of nurses got physical injury because of the violence events. A considerable proportion of exposed nurses (55.8%) thought that the violence events were preventable.

Workplace violence against nurses is a significant problem in health care settings all over the world and in Ismailia, Egypt. There is a need to increase awareness of the problem among health care workers as well as the general public. Further large-scale studies should be conducted to more closely examine the problem.