Workplace violence and its associated factors among nurses working in B.P. Koirala institute of health sciences, Dharan.

Thesis Report.

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND: Workplace violence (WPV) in the health sector is a serious
public health concern. Health care professionals were found to be more
vulnerable and experiencing violence more than 4 times in comparison with
people from other occupations. Nurses come in direct interaction with the
patients and visitors therefore they are exposed to more incidences of WPV
than other health care workers. WPV can take place in many forms such as
aggression, harassment, bullying, intimidation and assault. Violence at work
has become an alarming problem worldwide.

OBJECTIVE: To assess workplace violence and its associated factors among
nurses working in B.P. Koirala institute of health sciences, Dharan.

METHODOLOGY: A Hospital based Cross-sectional study was carried out
using self-administered questionnaire developed by International Labor Office,
International Council of Nurses, World Health Organization (WHO), and Public
Services International. Five hundred and twenty-seven nursing staffs of
BPKIHS were enrolled in this study applying the census survey method. Data
was exported to and analyzed using SPSS 11.5. Bivariate and multivariate
analysis was performed for assessing the association between the variables
at 95% confidence interval (CI). The predictors of workplace violence were
assessed by using binary logistic regression models.

RESULTS: The mean age of nurses was 31.01 (±7.14) years. More than one
third of the nurses (36.40%) reported exposure to at least one type of
workplace violence in the previous 12 months. The prevalence of verbal
abuse (34.70%) was higher than physical violence (6.10%) and sexual harassment (1.10%). And violence was mostly perpetuated by the relatives of
the patient followed by senior staff member and patient themselves.
Emergency department and more than 10 staff working at duty were
associated with higher odds of having WPV. Only 2.5% of the nurses reported
workplace violence to the concerned authority. The major reason for not
reporting violence was they felt it was useless and it was not important to
report them. The study revealed that due to physical violence 3.1% of the
nurses had extremely repeated disturbing memories and avoid talking about
that incident.

CONCLUSION: This study revealed that verbal abuse is the most common
form of violence than physical violence and sexual harassment. Emergency
department had higher odds of having WPV and it is mostly perpetuated by
relatives of patient, senior staff member and patient. Very few of the nurses
had reported about WPV and majority of nurses were unknown about the
policies of workplace violence.

Keywords: Nurses, physical violence, verbal abuse, sexual harassment,
workplace violence.