Research Article
Violence and Abuse against Staff in the Emergency Department, a Descriptive Analysis of a Two-Centre Staff Survey
Pourya Pouryahya, Alastair D McR
Meyer, Simon Sherington
Correspondence Address :
Pourya Pouryahya MD
GC ClinEpi, CCPU, M Trauma
FACEM, Emergency
Medicine Consultant
Department of Emergency
Medicine
Casey Hospital, Monash Health, Adjunct
Lecturer
School of Clinical Sciences, Department of
Medicine, Monash university
Director of Emergency
Medicine Research (DEMR), Casey hospital,
Monash Health
62-70 Kangan drive, Berwick,
Victoria 3806, Australia
Tele: +61 (03) 8768 1869
Email: Pourya.Pouryahya@monashhealth.org,
Pourya.Pouryahya@monash.edu
Received on: April 15, 2019, Accepted on: April 22, 2019, Published on: April 29, 2019
Citation: Pourya Pouryahya , Alastair D McR Meyer, Simon Sherington (2019). Violence and Abuse against Staff in the Emergency Department, a Descriptive Analysis of a Two-Centre Staff Survey
Copyright: 2019 Pourya Pouryahya et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background: "Violence" and "Abuse" against staff in the emergency department (ED) is not uncommon, however, there is a lack of data regarding the prevalence and characteristics of such incidents.
Objectives: To estimate the prevalence, type, and effect of violence and abuse experienced by staff during each shift in two emergency departments in the Monash Health network.
Method: During two separate two-week periods surveys were distributed to ED staff in two metropolitan Melbourne hospitals. Staff were identified by shift, area, and role. Staff were asked if they had experienced violence or abuse during that shift, how many times this occurred, whether it was initiated by a patient or accompanying person, the type of violence or abuse, whether alcohol or drugs were involved, if any injury or emotional effect resulted, and whether the incident was reported.
Results: 362 responses were recorded among ED staff during the study periods, of which, 36.5% reported some kind of violence or abuse. Majority of the victims were nursing staff with the type of violence predominately being verbal abuse. Among those, 22.1% of participants had been affected emotionally and 1.5% were physically injured.
Conclusion: Experience of violence and abuse against staff in the ED is frequent and affects ED workers in every shift. The vast majority of the incidents were not formally reported, and any future studies assessing incidence of such events cannot rely on formal reporting alone.