Violence Against Frontline Emergency Nurses During COVID-19 Pandemic in Guilan: A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Violence in the workplace is one of the most critical risk factors worldwide. Nurses are continuously exposed to violence in their workplace, primarily because of having contact with patients and their families. Objectives: The present study aimed to investigate the violence against nurses in Razi educational and remedial center in Rasht. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, we recruited 112 nurses working in Rasht's educational and remedial center by convenience sampling. The instrument included a questionnaire to assess workplace violence in medical settings, which had been used in several Iranian studies and was psychometrically assessed by Najafi in Iran. After collecting and entering the data into SPSS version 22 software, they were analyzed by independent t test, chi-square test, and Fisher's exact test. The significance level was set at a P value < 0.05. Results: The findings showed that 11.1% of nurses experienced physical violence, and 55.7% experienced verbal violence. We found a significant relationship between education level and verbal violence (P = 0.02) and between job (P = 0.02) and marital (P = 0.02) status and physical violence. Linear regression analysis showed that nurses with low experience were 1.01 times more likely to undergo violence (OR = 1.01; CI: 0.66 - 1.44). Conclusions: Verbal and physical violence frequently occurred against nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the authorities are required to take adequate measures to reduce the incidence of violence in hospitals.