WORKPLACE VIOLENCE AND ITS ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG NURSES WORKING IN GOVERNMENT HOSPITALS OF HARARI REGIONAL STATE AND DIRE DAWA CITY ADMINISTRATION, EASTERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Workplace violence is one of the global health concerns worldwide. Nurses are highly subjected to workplace violence in the healthcare than any other healthcare professionals. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of evidence on this issue. Hence this study aimed to fill the literature gap and the study finding might give a note for further investigation in the study area. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of workplace violence and its associated factors among nurses working in government hospitals of Harari Regional State and Dire Dawa City Administration, eastern Ethiopia from 1 st June – 12th July, 2021. Methods: An institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 603 nurses in all government hospitals of the study area. Probability proportional to size was allocated to respective hospitals. Simple random sampling technique was applied to recruit study participants at their workplace. A pre-tested self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. Collected data were entered into EpiData 3.1 and exported to SPSS 28 for further analysis. Descriptive statistics was carried to compute frequency, proportion, median and the inter-quartile range. Binary logistic regression analysis was performed. The adjusted odds ratio (AOR) with 95% Confidence Interval (CI) at P value less that 0.05 was used to declare significant association. Results: Workplace violence among nurse in the last 12 months was 64.0% (95% CI: 60.2- 67.7%). Having bachelor degree (AOR: 6.10, CI: 1.72-21.7) and diploma level of education (AOR: 9.31, CI: 2.35-36.8); working in Gyn/Obs (AOR: 2.12, CI: 1.03-4.33), emergency department (AOR: 3.67, CI: 1.46-9.19), psychiatric (AOR: 4.02, CI: 1.41-11.5) and medical wards (AOR: 5.41, CI: 2.49-11.7); being worried of violence (AOR: 1.65, CI: 1.04-2.61), and being a witness of physical violence incidents (AOR: 5.28, CI: 3.25-8.51); reporting procedure (AOR: 0.40, CI: 0.26-0.63) and institutional policies (AOR: 0.36, CI: 0.23-0.55) on workplace violence were significantly associated with workplace violence against nurses. Conclusion: Workplace violence against nurses was found to be proportionally higher in eastern Ethiopia. It‟s recommended that stakeholders could work on risk identification and management of violent incidents and behaviors and adapting different strategies and guidelines on prevention of workplace violence with special considerations of the identified departments