Investigation of Workplace Violence Against Midwives: A Systematic Review

Workplace violence is defined as an aggressive behavior toward the staff performing their duties at the workplace. This violence occurs in various forms, such as verbal abuse, physical abuse, assault, rape, harassment, bullying, threats, as well as ugly and unpleasant behaviors. Workplace violence can occur in any occupational environments or positions. Several studies have shown that violence takes place in midwifery workplaces. Regarding this, the present review was conducted to investigate the evidence on violence against midwives. The articles related to the subject of interest and published until Dec 2018 were searched in several databases, including SID, Irandoc, Scopus, Pubmed, and ISI Web of Science, with no time limitation using the following medical subject headings: “Workplace aggression”, “Bullying”, “Workplace violence”, “Verbal violence”, “Physical violence”, and “Midwife”. For reviewing the articles, a "data extraction form" was designed based on the research objective. The results were reported qualitatively. Among 214 articles retrieved in the initial search, seven articles met the inclusion criteria, including 1, 2, and 4 studies withcross-sectional, descriptive-exploratory, and descriptive-analytic designs, respectively. Verbal violence had the highest prevalence rate (83.3%), 60% of which was committed by patients’ companions. Despite the high level of violence in midwifery and according to the percentages stated in the articles, it is necessary to investigate this issue in Iran in order to identify the factors influencing violence, source of violence, midwife's experiences of violence, and its consequences. It is suggested that authorities at each hospital identify violence and sources of violence in the midwifery department with a standard questionnaire. They should also help resolve workplace violence because it can affect their job performance and productivity, which in turn negatively affect the quality of care and health of their patients.