Article
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Tracking Workplace Violence over 20 Years
Version 1
: Received: 25 August 2024 / Approved: 26 August 2024 / Online: 27 August 2024 (15:37:36 CEST)
How to cite: Magnavita, N.; Meraglia, I.; Viti, G.; Gasbarri, A. M. Tracking Workplace Violence over 20 Years. Preprints 2024, 2024081904. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202408.1904.v1 Magnavita, N.; Meraglia, I.; Viti, G.; Gasbarri, A. M. Tracking Workplace Violence over 20 Years. Preprints 2024, 2024081904. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202408.1904.v1
Abstract
Violence against healthcare workers (HCWs) is a widespread, underreported and inadequately prevented problem. Only a few companies have efficient systems for assessing the extent of the phenomenon. In 2005, the health surveillance service of a public health company introduced a system that monitored violence experienced by HCWs by means of three items from the Violent Incident Form (VIF), integrated with departmental in-depth analyses using the participatory ergonomics group technique. In 2005, the annual rate of physical assaults was 8.2%, that of threats 12.0%, while the harassment rate was 19.6%. Over the past twenty years of observation (2005-2024), the percentage of workers who reported experiencing a physical attack in the previous year at their periodic medical examination, has fluctuated between 5.8% and 11.1%, except for the years 2020 and 2021 when, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate was 3.9% and 3.2%, respectively. During the same pandemic period, the annual threat rate that ranged from 9.4% to 20.1%, dropped to 7.7%, while the prevalence of harassment, that was between 13.5 and 19.6, fell to 7.2%. HCWs believe that (i) limiting visitor access (ii) a better balance of the demand for services and (iii) a better attitude towards HCWs were the causes of the reduced rate of violence during the pandemic. Recording the violence experienced during health surveillance is an economical, reliable and sustainable risk assessment method.
Keywords
health surveillance; aggression; threat; harassment; risk assessment; participatory methods; COVID-19; prevention; longitudinal study; occupational epidemiology; methodology
Subject
Public Health and Healthcare, Public, Environmental and Occupational Health
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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