PREVALENCE OF WORKPLACE VIOLENCE, THE WAYS OF ENCOUNTER AND ITS CONSEQUENCES ON EMERGENCY MEDICAL STAFF: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Workplace violence is one of the occupational hazards that are increasingly growing worldwide. Long shifts, intense stress, isolated and uncontrolled environments, direct contact with anxious patients, and the nature of work, all put emergency medical staff at risk of workplace violence. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of workplace violence, the ways of encounter it and its consequences on emergency medical staff of West Azerbaijan province, Iran.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in West Azerbaijan province, Iran .in 2022. Four hundred medical emergency staff were enrolled in the study through convenience sampling method. The data were collected using a standard electronical questionnaire about workplace violence in the health department. The collected data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics, version 26. Descriptive statistics (absolute frequency, mean, standard deviation, and Average percentage) were used to analyze the data.

The results showed that 61% of emergency medical staff had experienced workplace violence in the past year, which was 54.3% verbal violence, 19.3% physical violence, 18% ethnic violence, and 10% sexual violence. In response to all types of workplace violence experienced, emergency medical staff often invited the attacker to calm down, and the reason for not reporting the incident from their viewpoint was the futility of reporting. Also, most were very dissatisfied with how the reported incidents were handled.

Emergency medical staff are exposed to high levels of violence. Therefore, it is necessary to have the essential fields to reduce and prevent violence in the workplace and increase the security of these employees, such as training the general public in the profession of emergency medicine and stressful working conditions, developing a system for reporting and handling violent incidents, and explanation of the support systems for the victims should be provided.