Investigation of health care workers’ stress, depression and anxiety levels in terms of work-related violence

Abstract

Behaviors and attitudes of the people who are in a service setting have a determining effect on the mood of the people who provide the service. This effect can lead to either positive or negative results depending on the course of the action. The feeling of happiness, security, appreciation and pride can be given as examples of positive moods and feeling of sorrow, disappointment, loneliness, stress, anxiety and depression can be given as examples of negative moods. This clearly manifests itself especially in the settings, which have an intensive interaction between service providers and service beneficiaries. Health sector is such a setting where an intensive interaction is observed between health care providers and patients/patient relatives. Moving from this fact, effects of workplace violence on health care professionals’ stress, anxiety and depression levels were investigated in this study. With this purpose, a survey was performed on the employees who work in a training and research hospital. The findings indicate a significant relationship between healthcare workers’ stress, anxiety and depression levels and the frequency of exposure to violence. In the light of the study findings, some suggestions, which could prevent health care violence, were made to researchers and decision-makers.