Workplace Violence: Actual and Feared Events in a Southeast Medical Center

Saturday, April 13, 2013: 2:25 PM

Jeffery Wade Forehand, MSN, RN-BC
Amy L. Spurlock, RN, PhD
School of Nursing, Troy University, Troy, AL

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to recognize the incidence and impact of the negative outcomes associated with workplace violence.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to understand the actual and feared violent events at work in a clinical setting.

Healthcare associated work place violence (WPV) remains an ever increasing danger to the nursing workforce. Healthcare workers are much more likely to be injured on the job than other professions with nurses at the highest risk of injury. In a recent year, registered nurses reported over 2,000 assaults and violent acts resulted in an average of 4 days lost from work. Outcomes impacted by WPV include patient care, medication errors, job satisfaction and retention and physical/mental health.

The purpose of phase one of this study was to assess current workplace violence in a southeast medical center with an anticipated need for an educational/behavioral intervention to impact WPV. Workplace violence began to be tracked as a targeted interest of employee health in January 2011 resulting in a perceived under-reporting of violent events.

In an academic-clinical partnership with a university school of nursing, a phase one research project was designed to establish baseline knowledge of actual and feared violent events at work. The investigators surveyed 53 medical center employees with the Violent Events at Work and Fear of Future Violent Events a Work surveys, tools with established test-retest reliability (r(34)) =.92, p < .01).

Items on both tools were significantly different by unit worked, including actual and feared physical violent events of hitting and kicking (p < .05) and spitting and biting (p < .05). Fear of future violent events was significantly different by unit worked (X 2 (35) = 56.634, p < .05). Of the seven employees who reported fear of future violent events at work, five (71.4%) were from the ER or Behavioral unit.  

The basis of this research project lay the groundwork for future interventional research aimed at decreasing workplace violence within the healthcare setting.