Workplace Violence: A Regional Survey in Iranian Hospital's Emergency Departments

Violence toward healthcare workers has emerged as an important health problem.This type of violence has the potential to severely influence healthcare workers, patients, and the community. Thisstudy aimed to explore the prevalence of violence in emergency departments, and to identify associated risk factorsusing a sample of emergency department healthcare workers in Iran. This cross-sectional study was conducted in emergency departments of five referral hospitals in Tabriz,the center of an Iranian north-western province. A questionnaire validated by experts was used to collectdemographic and violence-related data. The data were summarized using descriptive statistical methods. Logisticregression analysis was used to identify the potential violence risk factors. The majority of participants (84.5%) expressed experiencing at least one violent event within thepast three months of conducting the study. Almost all respondents reported experiencing stress, anxiety,depressive moods, or job dissatisfaction. A statistically significant association was found between violentevents experienced by the respondents during work in emergency departments and their work experience(OR = 0.88, P = 0.02), age (OR = 0.86, P < 0.001), and sex (OR = 9.10, P = 0.005). According to our results, a high proportion of workers in emergency department experience violentincidents during working hours. The statistically significant association between violent events and work experienceindicate limited work experience as a risk factor of violent incidents in emergency department. To compensatefor lack of adequate work experience in younger emergency departments employees, there is a need fortargeted training programs aiming to enhance communication and violence management skills in this group. Inaddition, male clinicians are the primary targets for violence reducing strategies.