Prevalence of Workplace Violence among Nurses: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study in Pravas, Palpa

Abstract

Introduction: The World Health Organization defined Workplace violence as ‘Incidents where staff is abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances related to their work, involving an explicit or implicit challenge to their safety, well-being or health. Nurses are the second highest group experiencing problems like verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual harassment at the workplace. Workplace violence will not affect the victim’s life but also produce negative consequences for the organization itself by decreased productivity of the nurse, low employee morale between nurses and co-workers, increased job stress, absenteeism, and diminished public image and trust in the organization.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the prevalence and perpetrators of workplace violence among 109 nurses in Lumbini Medical College, Tansen, Palpa. Structured and pretested self-administered questionnaires were used for data collection using a proportionate simple random sampling technique.

Results: More than three-fourths (78.9%) of participants said that they had ever been abused one way or the other. The prevalence of verbal violence (65%) was higher than the prevalence of emotional violence (50.5%) and physical violence (30.3%). Regarding the perpetrators, nearly three-fifths (61.5%) of respondents were abused by patients and more than half (51.4%) respondents were abused by the relatives of the patient. In almost all types of violence most of the victims; 23.94%, 30.9%, and 42.42% sought counseling in verbal, physical, and emotional violence respectively.

Conclusions: Workplace violence is an alarming problem among nurses at the workplace in Lumbini Medical College, Palpa, Nepal. Verbal violence was more commonly encountered compared with physical, emotional and sexual violence.