Frequency of violence against health workers in Adana province and their opinions on violence against healthcare workers

Introduction and Objective: Workplace violence is a major source of problems for employees all over the world. Health institutions are among the high-risk workplaces in terms of exposure to workplace violence. Only physical violence cases draw attention from the violence events in health institutions. Unfortunately, psychological, sexual and economic violence does not receive the necessary attention. This study was carried out to determine the frequency of exposure of the healthcare workers in Adana province, the type of violence they experienced, and the professional characteristics that affect them. It was conducted to reveal the opinions of health workers about the causes of violence against health workers and the measures to be taken against violence. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire with 37 questions was conducted by reaching 598 physicians and 357 assistant healthcare professionals working in Adana province. While evaluating the findings obtained from the study, SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 25.0 program was used for statistical analysis. Results: Of the 955 healthcare workers respondents, 463 (48,5%) were male, 492 (51,5%) were female. 820 healthcare workers (85.9%) who participated in our study have been exposed to violence at least once during their professional life. The most common type of violence is psychological or verbal violence, it has been found that the violence is mostly used by patient relatives and male gender. Male healthcare workers (30.1%) were found to be exposed to physical violence statistically significant more than women (19.2%). A statistically significant relationship was found between the number of patients examined and treated in one day and the rates of exposure to violence. It has been found that 30.6% of the health workers exposed to violence and 39.6% of the health workers exposed to physical violence report to the judicial authorities. Conclusion: The high level of violence against health workers is alarming and it appears that violence against healthcare workers is an important problem. In order to solve this problem, in addition to patients, patients' relatives and healthcare professionals, the government, healthcare administrators and the media also have important duties.