Workplace violence against nurses in Ahvaz educational hospitals

Violence is an occupational health and safety issue that nurses may be faced with in their day-to-day activities. The purpose of this study was to explore the extent violence against nurses and finding out its relation with some individual and organizational factors. This was an analytic cross sectional study that carried out in Ahvaz teaching hospitals. Sample was 192 nurses that were selected randomly. Data was gathered using a four section questionnaire included nurse’s demographic and organizational characteristics, questions about physical and verbal violence and manager actions to reduce violence. For analyzing data we used logistic regression model and descriptive statistics in SPSS software (V.16). 43.8% of nurses experienced physical violence and 74% of them experienced verbal violence once in their working surroundings. 31.2% of nurses had raised concerns about the outbreak of workplace violence and 39.6% of nurses rarely were concerned about work place violence. 49.2% and 45.2% of nurses that experienced physical and verbal violence were dissatisfied with address the violence problem. The results of logistic regression analysis model showed that there is a significant relationship between violence and variables such as age, marital status, location of work, rotating shifts, recruitment status and patients gender. Since lots of violence happens, more attention must be paid to this issue. A pro-active response, participatory approaching and developing new protocols for reporting of violence incidence may be useful for eliminating the violence threats.