Horizontal Violent Behavior in Critical Care Nurses and related factors

Background and Human dignity is amongst the main human rights and violence in workplace is a worrying issue for every person. The prevalence of violence in medical staff led the authors to study about violence in nurses and related factors in critical care units in educational hospitals affiliated to Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. A descriptive-analytical study was carried out in 2014 in which 481 nurses were recruited using stratified random sampling. Data was collected through Dumont Horizontal Violence Questionnaire (including 49 questions) and analyzed in SPSS v.21. Among the participants 16.6% had shown violent behavior towards their colleagues. It was also found that 34.9% of nurses have been exposed to violence at least once a month. The findings showed that head nurses were exposed to violent behaviors from hospital managers and physicians more than others. Data analysis indicated that peer violence was more prevalent in hemodialysis unit, while in CCU and ICUOH nurses were involved in violence from hospital managers and physicians. This study demonstrated that many nurses are exposed to violence, therefore, educating and training hospital personnel on anger management could reduce the rate of violent behavior.