Work-Related Assault Injuries among Nurses

Abstract

Work-related violence is a major public health problem; however, there is a serious deficiency in the knowledge of risk factors for this problem. The purpose of this case-control study was to identify risk factors for work-related assault injuries among nurses. We used unconditional logistic regression to model the dependence of work-related assault injuries on each exposure of interest and the respective confounders. We found a decreased rate for the presence of security personnel (RR = 0.40; 95% CI = 0.19–0.82). We found increased rates for the following factors: the perception that administrators considered assault to be part of the job (RR = 8.14; 95% CI = 3.76–17.60); having received assault prevention training in the current workplace (RR = 4.64; 95% CI = 2.33–9.23); a high (>5) vs low (<2) patient/personnel ratio (RR = 2.54; 95% CI = 1.13–5.70); working predominantly with patients with mental illness (RR = 3.5; 95% CI = 1.41–8.85); and working with patients who had more than 1− to 4-week and more than 4-week lengths of stay in the institution vs <1 day (RR = 8.85; 95% CI = 1.58–49.52 and 4.25; 95% CI = 1.17–15.39, respectively). (Epidemiology 1999;10:685–691)