Measurement and monitoring of health care worker aggression exposure

Aggression exposure is highly prevalent in healthcare workers, and is a complex problem that negatively impacts patient and worker safety and health. Typically only events of high severity (e.g., use of physical restraint or incident reports) are monitored in healthcare settings. Unfortunately, these events are likely a small fraction of all aggressive events that range from verbal to physical. Improved measurement and monitoring of healthcare worker aggression exposure may lead to improved patient and worker safety and health. This article provides an overview of aggression exposure in healthcare and reviews the measurement of aggression, including challenges and common measures. Discussion of a pilot study presents insights gained from using a novel measure of aggression, handheld counters. The conclusion offers implications for research and clinical practice.