Prevalence of Workplace Violence among Nurses in a Hospital: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study at Nepalgunj Medical College Teaching Hospital

Abstract

This research article presents a descriptive cross-sectional study titled "Workplace Violence among Nurses in a Hospital." The study was conducted at Nepalgunj Medical College Teaching Hospital in Banke as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor in Nursing Science Programme. The primary objectives of the study were to determine the prevalence of workplace violence among nurses in a hospital setting. A quantitative approach utilizing a non-probability purposive sampling technique with a sample size of 62 was used to collect data, and a semi-structured questionnaire was employed as the instrument for data collection. The collected data was analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 20, and the findings were analyzed with various descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage. The results of the study indicated that half of the nurses (50%) reported experiencing some form of violence in their workplace. Verbal violence was found to be the most prevalent form of workplace violence, accounting for nearly half (43.5%) of the incidents, while physical violence was reported by only 9.7% of the nurses and sexual violence by 8.1%. These findings underscore the need for proactive measures to prevent and address workplace violence in healthcare settings, with a particular emphasis on preventing verbal abuse.

Keywords: Workplace, Violence, Sexual harassment, Nurses, prevalence