Comparing workplace violence among nurses and other professionals using online articles: A social network analysis

To investigate workplace violence in online articles and compare workplace violence-related words characteristics of nurses and other professionals using social network analysis.

Workplace violence is a widespread problem across nursing practice. Online articles are useful for the timely identification and management of nurse violence problems.

This descriptive exploratory study involved data extraction focused around the search term workplace violence from sources published during January 1990-December 2020 listed in the BIGKinds database, a Korean integrated news database system. The connections between the extracted terms were determined through social network analysis using the software UCINET and NetDraw.

Our search found 675 articles for nurses and 5797 articles for other professionals related to workplace violence. Work burden was found to be the primary cause of violence among both nurses and other professionals. Specifically, being a woman was closely related to violence among nurses, and abuse of power was closely related to violence among other professionals.

Nurses and other professionals have different vulnerabilities to violence, which require a different approach to addressing violence.

Nurse managers should provide a healthy work environment, sufficient workforce and flexible work schedules to protect nurses from workplace violence.