[User violence towards nursing staff in public hospitals: Murcia, Spain]

The workplace violence has special relevance for the health care workers. Nursing staff is one of the professions most affected by this risk. Our objective is to determine the prevalence during the past year of diverse hostile manifestations by users towards professional hospital nursing staff who depend on the "Servicio Murciano de Salud" [Health Service of Murcia] (SMS), as well as to detect the sociodemographic and occupational workers characteristics associated with higher exposure.

A cross-sectional study carried out during the year 2010 of a random sample of nursing personnel from all the hospitals of SMS, through a self-administered and anonymous survey (Ecoh-U scale). The sample was stratified by hospitals and services (30% of the workers) and finally we got a sample of 1.489 workers (confidence level 99%; sampling error 1,75%). We compared the punctuation average obtained in the scale according to variables sociodemographics and laborables. We used the test t of student in variables dichotomous and ANOVA and Tukey in variables multi-response.

The 21,8% of the surveyed people reported that they suffered from "anger due to assistential delay" at least once a month. The workers who obtained punctuations significantly larger were psychiatric hospital workers (19,7), emergency workers (20,60), temporary (16,38) and with old 6-10 years in the profession (17,20).

Although nursing staff is one of the professions most exposed to violence, the risk distribution is not homogeneous. Significant differences were found according to marital status, age, hospital, service, profession, contract type, shift and seniority in the profession.