Perception of violence and affecting factors on healthcare professionals from the patients' and patients relatives' perspectives

INTRODUCTION AND AIM: In this study, it is aimed to determine the causes of violence against healthcare professionals from the perspective of patients and their relatives, and to determine the characteristics of patients and their relatives who think that healthcare professionals deserve violence or who have previously used violence against healthcare professionals. METHOD: Participants who were in Sakarya Training and Research Hospital between January 1, 2022 and April 30, 2022 as patients or their relatives and agreed to participate in the study were included in the study. In the study, data were collected in inpatient services, outpatient clinics and waiting rooms by face-to-face interviews with the questionnaire method. Statistical significance level was accepted as p<0.05. SPSS v20.0 (IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 20.0; Armonk, NY, USA) package program was used for analysis. RESULTS: Of the 497 participants participating in the study, 48.7% (242 people) were male and 51.3% (255 people) were female. The mean age ± standard deviation of the participants was 39.20±12.16 years. The risk of having used violence against a healthcare worker is 7.393 times (95% CI: 1.473-37.106 p=0.015) in male gender, 12.169 times (95% CI: 2.155-68.723 p=0.005) in the patient role, 4.411 times (95% CI: 1.036-18.777 p=0.045) in those with chronic diseases, 16,095 times (95% CI: 2.841-91.191 p=0.002) for those who had witnessed violence against healthcare workers, 6.340 times (95% CI: 1.564-25.694 p=0.010) for those who stated that they were exposed to violence by healthcare professionals and 0.081 times (95% CI: 0.014-0.472 p=0.005) for those who think that the attention of doctors is sufficient. CONCLUSION: Male gender, being a patient in the hospital, having a chronic disease, witnessing violence in health facilities before, being exposed to violence by healthcare professionals before, thinking that doctors do not care for patients are the independent variables that increase the risk of having used violence against healthcare professionals.