Iran Occupational Health

Background and aims: Workplace violence against female nurses is a significant and increasing problem. In most of cases, female nurses do not report violent events. The aims of current research are to investigate workplace violence against female nurses in three general hospitals of Ilam located in Iran using the questionnaire in 2012 and identify their reactions when facing with violent events. 

Methods: This study is a descriptive research that the prevalence of workplace violence against female nurses is investigated. The required information is obtained by means of the author-made questionnaire that is distributed among 53 nurses and the SPSS software is used for data analysis.

Results: Among the samples, 90.6 % and 15.1 % of participants had faced with verbal and physical assaults of patients during last year, respectively. Moreover, 92.5 % and 11.3 % of nurses had experienced verbal and physical assaults of patient companions, respectively. Remarkably, most of nursing staff believe that reporting aggressive evident is not useful at all. A significant correlation is found between physical assaults of patients against age of nurses. In addition, a relationship between verbal violence of patients versus marriage status of nurses is observed (P< 0.05).

Conclusion: A large rate of aggressive incidents is observed against female nurses, in present study. In this regards, enhance in security guards can significantly reduce this term. Also, recording aggressive events and legally pursuing the people who committed to violence are essential.