[Violence in health sector: the contribution of Italian nursing research]

Violence in the health sector is a severe and widespread phenomenon worldwide, which increasingly attracts the attention of international scholars. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the contribution of Italian nursing research on the issue of violence in health care.

Starting from a search in the international databases PubMed, CINAHL and Scopus, and Italian ILISI and the SISI archive, we found 49 works by Italian nursing researchers and scholars.

The Italian scientific production is focused above all on the issue of Type 2 violence (client on worker) and Type 3 (worker on worker), with predominantly descrip- tive and observational studies, but also qualitative/phenomenological. The publications have increased over the years, becoming increasingly internationalized, as evidenced by the number of citations in the articles and the growing impact factor of the journals. The contribution of the doctoral schools is proving to be fundamental to favor research in this field.

The increasing dissemination and sharing of research results on this phenomenon with the entire scientific and professional community are desirable so that a useful and robust contribution can be made in combating violence in health care.