Question

Investigate violence in healthcare. Discuss the causes, the effects on staff and families, and what could be done to decrease the events.

Answer 1

Health care violence refers to the incident where staff abused, threatened or assaulted during the time of work which causes physical and psychological harm in terms of attacks, verbal abuse, bullying and also sexual harassment.

According to World health organization states that 8-38% of health workers suffer physical violence at some point in their career.

Causes

• Inadequate staff pattern causes increase the workload of staff.
• Violent and aggressive behavior of patient.
• No policy and program for the prevention of violence.
• Morbidity, dissatisfaction causes violence.
• Pain, devastating surrounding, minds and mood altering medication and disease progression causes violence.
• Lack of means of emergency communication.
• Inadequate security and mental health personal on site.
• Long wait for patient.

Effect

• It has negative impact on physical and psychological well being of the health care staff.
• Violence reduces motivation of the staff and increases the dissatisfaction.
• It also affect the quality of health care and reduce the productivity.
• It causes financial loss in health care.

Intervention

• It can be managed by physical security.
• Formulate the policy against the health care violence.
• Maintain the effective line of communication.
• Provide adequate training on prevention of health care violence.
• Recognize the workplace violence and participate the staff for the prevention of violence.
• Establish adequate resources in terms of manpower, money and material.
• Engineering control and work place adaptation to minimize risk. It include using physical barriers (enclosure or guard ), adequate lighting, panic button etc.
• Maintain good interpersonal relationship with patient and family.