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Understanding the Experience of Workplace Violence in Hospitals as Documented
by Nursing Staff

S. Brunero 1

Nursing, University of Technology, Australia
1

Background: Workplace violence can produce traumatic results for those involved, the importance
of preventive measures needs to be paramount in health service policy and process. Healthcare staff
are asked to document their experience of violent incidents after every occasion usually via incident
reporting software, which allows for a free text description of the event. There is a lack of understanding
of how health care staff document reports of violence and how they explain the event.

Objective: The aim of this study is determine the circumstances surrounding workplace violent events
as document by healthcare staff.

Methods: A qualitative study using the four step READ approach to document analysis was used
to examine workplace violence incidents reports over a 12 month period, including emergency and
Oral Presentation Abstracts
medical/surgical wards (September 2021-September 2022). A total of 775 incidents were reviewed,
with accounts of verbal and physical violence documented. Content analysis was used to analyse the
textual data in the the reported incidents. All data was deidentified and ethics approval was obtained.

Results: Five categories of workplace violence were found; 1. ‘Escalation Dynamics’ - patterns and
progression of how violence incidents intensify; 2. ‘Warning Behaviours’ - verbal or non-verbal signals
that may foreshadow physical violence if not addressed; 3. ‘Authoritative institutional Interventions’
- how aggression correlates to protocols involving security personnel or law enforcement; 4. ‘Care
Delivery Methods’ - how certain treatment procedures and approaches might inadvertently elicit
violence; and 5. ‘Situational Stressors’ - external circumstances or changes that act as triggers for
violence.

Conclusion: Workplace violence in health care is a multifaceted interplay of events with the nurse
involved in all aspects of the process. Implications for organisational training and policy development
are discussed. Understanding the antecedents or triggers to workplace violence will enable more
preventative strategies to emerge which can lead to significant improvement in nurse-patient quality
and safety

Keywords: aggression, workplace violence, nursing, mental health, patient safety

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Correspondence: Scott Brunero, Nursing, University of Technology, Australia
E-mail: scott.brunero@uts.edu.au

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