Examining the Effectiveness of Typologies of Violence Used in Predicting and Responding to Workplace Violence Against...

The rate of violence against nurses far exceeds what should be reasonably accepted and suggests this is an issue that requires targeted intervention. Typologies have been used to predict violence, but there is a gap in the literature on antecedent and precipitating factors that lead to violence against nurses.

The aims were to (1) identify typologies of workplace violence used in nursing literature, (2) evaluate evidence for their effectiveness in predicting escalation and/or guiding responses and (3) synthesise antecedent and precipitating factors absent from existing typologies.

This article utilises a rapid review methodological framework, with emphasis on thematic construction to present current typologies of violence.

A search of academic literature was carried out in ProQuest Central, EBSCO and Web of Science databases.

Articles were limited to English-language peer-reviewed studies published between 2017 and 2022. Two-stage screening (title/abstract then full text) was undertaken independently by three authors, with disagreements resolved through discussion. Data were extracted on typology use, evidence of predictive/response utility and reported antecedent and precipitating factors. Forty-four studies were included, with 26 studies directly informing the present evidence synthesis.

Across incident-focused studies, typologies were used mainly for descriptive classification of perpetrators or settings, with minimal evaluation of predictive validity or response tailoring. Nurses consistently reported antecedent organisational conditions (e.g., staffing, crowding and safety culture) and precipitating interactional cues (e.g., agitation, escalating tone and perceived delays) that shaped both escalation risk and effective responses but were weakly represented in prevailing typologies.

Existing typologies help identify likely perpetrators of workplace violence but remain insufficient as stand-alone tools for real-time prediction and response because they omit escalation dynamics. This review contributes an integrative framework linking typology categories to antecedent and precipitating factors nurses can recognise and target.