NURSES AND OCCUPATIONAL VIOLENCE: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Joseph Ndovoyo*, Damaris Moraa, Sarah Makong’o, Peter Kiambuthi, Grace Kibet and Dr. Jashon Nganyi

ABSTRACT

Violence at work, refers to instances where persons are abused, threatened, or assaulted in circumstances related to their employment, involving an explicit challenge to their safety and well-being. Aggression in the healthcare sector has been a concern for many years, especially among the nursing profession. Globally, one-third of the nursing population experience some form of workplace aggression in any 12-month period, where two-thirds of nurses‘ experience non-physical violence, and one-quarter experience sexual harassment. The aim of this systematic review was to determine the type of occupational violence acts against nurses. A systematic review, integrating themes emerging from relevant articles and comments from in-depth interviews from the previous studies was done. The researchers retrieved 60 but reviewed 40 of this articles that had similar objectives from CINAHL, COCHRANE and PubMed data bases. The data was organized thematically. Most of the articles 34 (97.1%) nurses experience high levels of physical abuse. Accident and Emergency department was the most common site for violence (75.7%). Delay in offering services due to shortage of resources was the most cited risk factor (75%), while burnout was the most experienced impact following an incidence of violence. The commonly highlighted strategy to prevent workplace violence to nurses is provision of adequate resources (40 %). In conclusion, nurses encounter workplace violence. Future research should try to determine the specific factors, including staff characteristics associated with the incidences of workplace violence to nurses.

Keywords: Nurses, violence, Occupation Aggressiveness, Strategies, Workplace.