Frequency of violence against nurses and its related factors during cardiopulmonary resuscitation in emergency wards

Workplace violence in the healthcare setting is an important issue in recent years.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of violence against emergency and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) nurses and its related factors in teaching hospitals in 2019. Setting and Design: In this cross sectional study, 140 emergency and CPR nurses who worked in hospitals of the Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences randomly selected.

The workplace violence in the health sector questionnaire was used. Statistical Analysis Used: Data were analyzed using the SPSS software version 20.0.

The mean age of the nurses was 34.48 ± 6.07 years with work experience of 10.49 ± 5.93 years. Most of them were female (n = 86; 61.4%) and married (n = 115; 82.1%). A total of 302 different types of harassment were reported during 12 months before the study including physical 55.7%, verbal/bullying 38.6%, sexual 5%, and racial 29.3%. Relatives of the patients were the main perpetrators of the violence. Association between gender and physical and sexual harassments was significant (P = 0.0001 and P = 0.043, respectively). Physical harassment was significantly associated with marital status (P = 0.044), education level (P = 0.034) and worry about workplace violence (P = 0.020). The association between racial violence with the working situation was significant (P = 0.008).

Based on results the prevalence of workplace violence against emergency and CPR nurses is a serious problem. Future research must move from descriptive to intervention studies to provide a guideline in clinical settings.