Assessment of Violence Directed at Resident Physicians Working in a University Hospital during COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors/Creators
- 1. Inonu University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Public Health, Malatya, Turkey
- 2. Inonu University Institute of Health Sciences, Malatya, Turkey
Description
Objective: This study intends to evaluate the violence committed against the resident physicians who worked in a university hospital during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted between September-October 2022. The required institutional permissions and ethics committee approval in order to conduct this study were obtained. The sample size of the research was calculated as 160 persons. This research was completed with these 163 persons who accepted to participate in it. With the questionnaire form prepared by the researchers of this study, the data of the research was gathered online. The chi-square test was used to assess the statistical analysis.
Results: The average age of participants is 28 (24-52). The women make up 52.1 per cent of them. While the rate of physicians who had suffered from the violence was 40.5% this figure became 49.1% during COVID-19 outbreak. 93.8% of the physicians stated that they were exposed to verbal violence. 48% of the physicians expressed that they experienced violence for the first time, which respectively occurred in the emergency service (59.3%). 60% of women and 37.2% of men was subjected to violence during COVID-19. Therefore, the violence rate against female physicians is significantly higher than the rate for males (p=0.004).
Conclusion: About half of the physicians participated in this research stated that they did not suffer from any violence either before or during COVID-19 outbreak. Almost all of the acts of violence occurred during the COVID-19 outbreak was verbal violence. The necessary measurements must be taken in emergency services where the acts of violence mostly happened in order to stop these incidents. As the physicians suffered highly from the violence during the COVID-19 outbreak and they largely suppose that the legal protection lacks to protect them against perpetrators, their professional motivation and psychological resilience may be badly affected.