Workplace violence in a tertiary health-care institute in Manipur: A cross-sectional study

Background: Workplace violence is much prevalent across the globe in almost all institutions dealing directly with the general public and hospitals are no exception to it. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine the prevalence of workplace violence among doctors and nurses in a tertiary health-care institute in Manipur and to discuss the contributing factors and preventive measures against workplace violence. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from March to April 2019 among a sample of 438 among doctors and nurses of clinical departments of a tertiary health-care institute, Manipur. A predesigned self-administered questionnaire which was modified and adopted from the “Workplace Violence in the Health Sector Country Case Study-Questionnaire” was used for data collection. Data were analyzed using SPSS IBM Statistics version 21. Statistical analyses such as mean, standard deviation (SD), proportion, and Chi-squared (χ2) test were performed taking P < 0.05 as statistically significant. Results: The mean (±SD) age was 31.02 (±7.1) years. About 32.8% had experienced at least one form of violence. Verbal abuses were the most common form (72.8%). Staff nurses (45.7%) faced the maximum number of incidents. Significantly male staff faced more workplace violence than females. Conclusion: The prevalence of workplace violence was a little more than 1 out of 4. Verbal abuse was the most common workplace violence. The communication gap (123, 49.8%) was cited as the main cause of workplace violence. Increasing security measures and limiting numbers of patient's attendants are required to deal with workplace violence.