A cross-sectional study on health care workers' witnesses of violent injuries to colleagues in hospital in China

  Objective  The frequency of health care workers' witness of violent injuries to colleagues and adverse effects resulting from such violence were investigated in order to provide a reference basis for making the relevant policies and measures to prevent the occurrence of violence.

  Methods  Taking the hospitals in Shandong, Henan, and Guizhou provinces as the study objects, 1 588 health care workers in 43 hospitals were surveyed by the multi-stage random stratified sampling.

  Results  Totally 54.0% surveyed subjects had witnessed at least one violent injury event to his/her colleagues in previous year, while 16.4% had witnessed at least 3 events. Thus, they became more cautious in their work(72.2%), had decline in work enthusiasm (71.6%), occurred depression, anxiety, anger and other bad emotions (61.0%) and wanted to change job (52.6%). Logistic regression analysis showed that: (1) Compared with the personnel in the first-class hospital and administrative logistics staff, the staff in the third-class hospital(OR = 1.457, P = 0.020) or the second-class hospital(OR = 1.569, P = 0.009), and medical doctors(OR = 2.283, P < 0.001) or nurses (OR = 1.873, P = 0.007) had a higher risk of witnessing violent incidents; compared with those with senior professional titles, those with lower professional titles (OR = 0.525, P = 0.021) had less risk of witnessing violent trauma. (2) Compared with administrative logistics staff, medical doctors (OR = 2.903, P < 0.001), nurses (OR = 3.224, P < 0.001) or medical technicians (OR = 2.742, P < 0.001) were more likely to have negative cognition of doctor-patient relationship and their children's willingness to practice medicine; compared with senior professional titles or witnessed violent incidents, hospital practitioners with lower professional titles (OR= 0.487, P = 0.007) and hospital practitioners without witnesses of violent incidents (OR = 0.410, P < 0.001) had less risk of negative cognition.

  Conclusions  The overall frequency of witnessing violence by medical staffs was high, which had a negative impact on their psychology. The professional identity and security of the medical staffs were low.