Objective: Violence against doctors and health professionals in the healthcare environment is thought to have increased in recent years. Although physical and verbal assaults in the health care system have been evaluated in many different aspects, a limited amount of research has been done in this field in our country. For this reason, we aimed to investigate assaults towards doctors working at the Çanakkale State Hospital and Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University in Turkey.
Method: A questionnaire was prepared by researchers assessing assaults within the last year on doctors working in the state and university hospitals. Data from 130 doctors who agreed to participation in the study were analysed with SPSS version 16. Descriptive statistics, independent sample T-test for normally distributed variables and Mann-Whitney U test for non-normally distributed variables were used to compare the groups.
Results: We found that 59.2% (n=77) of the doctors were verbally and/or physically assaulted at least once during the past year. The majority of attackers consisted of relatives of patients (40.8% verbal attack, n=31). The verbal assaults mostly occurred in outpatient clinics (61.5%), with half of the physical assaults occurring in the emergency department. The vast majority of doctors considered that poor health policies were the most important reason for assaults (83.3%, n=65), and nearly all of them thought that violence towards doctors has increased in recent years (97.4%).
Conclusion: The fact that most of the doctors exposed to assaults, regardless of gender, institution, or work position, perceived health policies as being responsible for this violent atmosphere, is very striking. We believe that larger sample-size and comprehensive countrywide studies in this area would help to provide solutions for this problem.
Key words: State hospital, university hospital, violence towards doctors
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