Prevalence of workplace violence among healthcare workers in a health district in Selangor and its associated factors

Introduction: Workplace violence is incident where staff are abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances related to their work, including commuting to and from work, involving an explicit or implicit challenge to their safety, well-being or health. It can be as mild as verbal abuse to a very serious condition such as homicide. Currently, there is no well establish reporting system or surveillance in healthcare setting specifically on workplace violence especially for violence which did not cause any physical injury. Published research on prevalence of healthcare workplace violence in Malaysia is very limited and only focus on nurses especially in the hospital. Objectives: This study aims to determine the prevalence of workplace violence among healthcare workers in Gombak health district and to determine its associated factors. Methodology: This is a cross-sectional study using proportionate stratified random sampling according to occupation among 481 healthcare workers in Gombak Health District. Face to face interview using structured questionnaire were done in this study. The questionnaire consists of three parts which are personal and workplace data, workplace violence and psychosocial factor. The workplace violence is any violence in any circurmstances related to work occurred within 6months prior to this study. After obtaining consent, the participants were interviewed and the answers were transferred to the structured questionnaire. The data were then analysed using descriptive, chi- squared test and multiple logistic regression. Results: Out of the 481 eligible samples, 441 participants agreed to participate giving a response rate of 91.7%. Around three quarter of the respondents was female. The median age was 31 years old. Majority of the respondents occupation were nurses or midwives (37.9%) followed by Health and Environmental Officer or Assistant Health and Environmental Officer (18.4%). The median working experience was 7 years. Around half of the respondents (48.5%) work in outpatient clinic and followed by 27.4 % of them working in maternal and child clinic. The prevalence of workplace violence among healthcare workers of Gombak Health District was found to be 24.3%. Among all risk factors studied, education level, occupation, main workplace setting, numbers of staff in workplace and job demand were found to have significant association with workplace violence. These factors were then analyzed using multiple logistic regression and only occupation, main workplace setting and job demand were significant enough to predict workplace violence. Conclusion: The prevalence in this study is comparable with the study in other country using the same definition of 6 months timeframe for workplace violence. In this study, it was found that occupation, main workplace setting and job demand were significant predictors of workplace violence.

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