[Violence in the emergency department of a maximum care hospital]

The emergency department of hospitals is known as a violent place, nevertheless the true incidence of violent acts in emergency departments in the German-speaking area has been little studied. The goal of this study was to record the occurrence of violence in a university hospital located in the inner city and to evaluate parameters, such as type of violence and accumulation in certain patient groups.

Cases of violence in the emergency department were documented by the personnel over the time frame of 1 year (March 2017 to February 2018) and retrospectively evaluated.

An increase of violence during the evening hours (10.3% vs. 67.8%) could be shown. Intoxicated patients were responsible for the highest proportion of acts of violence. In addition, intoxicated patients were shown to be significantly more frequently aggressive than sober patients (63.72% vs. 31.65%). Non-intoxicated patients were as a rule only verbally aggressive. De-escalation by emergency room personnel was shown to be successful in 62.5% of the cases. In the rest of the cases help from outside, such as security personnel or the police was necessary, especially for intoxicated patients.

Violence occurs with high regularity in emergency departments. The average incidence of acts of violence of every 0.7 days shows the need for safety precautions for hospital personnel.