WORKPLACE VIOLENCE AGAINST PHYSICIANS: AN ONLINE CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Abstract

Introduction: Workplace violence against Health care workers (HCWs) in Egypt is a widely spread phenomenon that has a great disruptive effect on the healthcare systems. Accordingly, efforts are required to study this phenomenon and recommend solutions. Aim of Work: To identify the recent trends in workplace violence against physicians and its main predictors. Materials and Methods: An online cross-sectional study was conducted targeting working physicians in healthcare facilities in Egypt. Non-probability snowball sampling technique was used to recruit study participants. Data were collected using an electronic questionnaire that was designed using Google forms. The link of the questionnaire was posted to participants using social media applications namely Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram. Results: At the end of the data collection period, there were 445 completed questionnaires submitted by study participants. The prevalence of workplace violence was 82.5% (367 out of 445 physicians reported their exposure to violence whether physical, verbal, or both types). Visitors/patients’ relatives were the main source of violence and the Emergency department was the main setting of violence incidents. Exposure to violence was significantly affected by socioeconomic characters of participants (age, gender, and level of education) and the work-related variables (duration of work/ years, type of employer (Governmental or private institutions), specialty, working hours/week, shifting time, and security at the workplace). The main causes of workplace violence were lack of penalty for aggressors, poor security, and staff shortage. Conclusion: Physicians are at high risk for violence exposure which does not only affect the victims but the whole health system. The high prevalence of workplace violence observed in the current study obliges the decision-maker to put this issue as a priority with an urgent application of proper prevention and control programs.