Taking Prior Sick Leave Patterns Into Account When Estimating Health Consequences of Violence on the Job

Abstract

Background: Violence on the job has been shown to harm both physical and psychosocial health, but the results presented in existing studies might be biased because they have not considered prior indicators of such health. Methods: Physical violence and threats were pooled into a measure of workplace violence for 77,388 randomly sampled respondents from the working population in Denmark in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Longitudinal analyses of these survey data merged with administrative records on sick leave (exceeding 30 days, implying that the consequences of the violence were more serious) were performed. Separate analyses were conducted by sector, gender, and by gender within sectors. Findings: Experiencing violence increased sick leave +36% from before to after the violence relative to the general trend among other respondents that did not experience a violent event. Conclusions/Application to Practice: Work-related violence is a serious health issue, especially in health care, even when we meticulously took prior use of sick leave into account to obtain less biased results.