Aggression and violence against paramedics and the impact on mental health: A survey study

Abstract

Aggression and violence against paramedics by patients or their relatives are frequent events. Therefore, the aim of this study is to estimate the prevalence of aggression / violence against paramedics in Germany and the impact on their mental health. To perform this study, a nationwide survey method was followed where items of the Perceptions of Prevalence of Aggression Scale (POPAS) and the short version of the Depression-Anxiety-Stress-Scale (DASS-21) were used. The results obtained from the feedback of 786 participants (52.42% female) showed that verbal aggression was experienced by 96.44%, provocative aggressive behavior by 79.62% and threatening verbal aggression by 75.16% of the participants; respectively. Mild and severe physical violence were experienced by 59.75% and 16.82% of all participants; respectively. Moreover, the results indicated a significantly higher risk of experiencing humiliating aggressive behavior (OR: 1.38 [95% CI: 1.00; 1.90]; p = 0.049) of female participants. Correlations between DASS-21 subscale for depression and anxiety were seen for frequency of experiencing different kind of aggressive / violent behaviors. Nevertheless, based on rho values ranging from 0.14 to 0.27 DASS-21 stress subscale indicated the largest correlations with investigated kinds of aggression / violence. To this end, this work indicated a high prevalence of aggression and violence against German paramedics and the implementation of an aggression / violence monitoring system might help to improve their situation.