Encouraging employees to report verbal violence in primary health care in Serbia: A cross-sectional study
Article Category: Original scientific article
Published Online: Jul 28, 2016
Page range: 11 - 17
Received: Jan 25, 2016
Accepted: May 16, 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/sjph-2017-0002
Keywords
© National Institute of Public Health, Slovenia
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Introduction
Workplace violence is a serious and multidimensional problem that adversely affects professional and personal lives of employees. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and characteristics of verbal violence as a part of psychological violence among employees in primary health care in Belgrade, and to identify contributing factors of verbal violence in the workplace.
Methods
In this cross-sectional study, the final analysis included 1526 employees, using multi-stage sampling. Data were collected using the questionnaire Workplace Violence in the Health Sector Country Case Studies Research, developed by ILO/ICN/WHO/PSI. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis were used to analyse the data. The general response rate was 86.8% (1526/1757).
Results
It was found that 47.8% of the participants were subjected to verbal violence. The main source of verbal violence was patient/client, 55.6% of employees did not report the incident. Among those who did not report the incident, 74.9% believed that reporting violence was useless. The interaction with patients (OR, 1.45; 95% CI, 1.02-2.06) and work between 6pm and 7am (OR, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.01-1.60) were significant contributing factors of verbal violence.
Conclusion
The results are indicative of a high prevalence of verbal violence against employees in primary health centres, which could have undesirable consequences. Conducting a better organizational measure and encouraging employees to report workplace violence could reduce the prevalence of verbal violence.