Assessing workplace violence toward EMS personnel in prehospital settings of East Azerbaijan Province

Emergency medical service (EMS) personnel encounter with their patients in stressful situations; therefore, they have high risk for workplace violence (WPV). Until now there is no relevant study investigated WPV toward Iranian EMS personnel. Therefore, the aim of present study is to determine the prevalence of WPV toward EMS personnel in East Azerbaijan Province (EAP) and WPV-related factors. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study. The study sample was consisted of 160 EMS personnel working in the prehospital setting in East Azarbaijan Province. These personnel selected to participation with simple random sampling. For data gathering, a combined questionnaire was used. This questionnaire assessed the characteristics of respondents, the prevalence of (138 questionaire) four form of WPV including verbal harassment, physical assaults, cultural harassment, sexual harassment and WPV-related factors. Questionnaires posted to subjects and resulted in 86. 25% (138 questionaire) response rate. The ethic committee in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences approved the study. In order to analyzing the data SPSS software (version 13) and descriptive statistic were used. Results showed that 103 of respondents (74. 63%) experienced at least one form of WPV during last year. Most frequently reported form of WPV was verbal harassment (71%), followed by physical assault (37. 7%), cultural harassment (8. 7%) and sexual harassment (0%). The most frequent response to WPV was «invite offender to calm» (52. 9%). Many of respondents believed that «any effort to follow up the violent events is ineffectual». This study highlights the high frequency of violent events toward EMS personnel in East Azarbaijan Province. In order to decrease the violent events, public education and continuing education for EMS personnel is recommended.