Medicina Ocupacional y Asuntos de Salud

Abstracto

Violence against Nurses in Kuwait

Eqbal Jawad AL-Hussain and Muhammad Shebl

Background: Workplace violence against started to be a pandemic concern receiving attention from all the nations since the end of the last century. This issue has many impacts on the nurses' personal lives, also on the effectiveness and quality of the medical service provided.

Objetive: This study purposes to detect the prevalence of violence against nurses in Kuwait, aiming to establish the proper bases for its future prevention.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in one Kuwaiti governmental hospital. 900 questionnaires were dispersed randomly among the nurses working in the hospital. There are 600 questionnaires that entered the statistical analysis.

Results: Verbal violence found to be the most prevalent type 45.8%. Age showed a strong association with racial <0.001 and sexual <0.001, also bullying 0.004. Physical violence showed a strong association with female gender <0.001. Arabs has stronger predilection for bullying 27.27% and sexual assault 9.09%. Meanwhile, racial harassment has a stronger predilection towards non-stated 37.70% and Asian 20.89% nationalities. After adjusting for co-variants, physical violence showed a stronger correlation with female gender (OR= 6.09, CI= 3.11, 11.95). Verbal violence was reduced in the ICU (OR= 0.23, CI=0.12, 0.46) and NS (OR= 0.31, CI=0.16, 0.62) departments. Bullying showed a significant predilection for ages 40-44 years old (OR= 3.65, CI= 1.34, 9.90).

Conclusion: It can be deduced from this study that violence against nurses in Kuwait is a highly prevalent subject. An effective and practical strategy has to be adopted by multiple authorities, in order to establish appropriate future preventative measures.