Aggression and violence directed toward general medicine physicians

Abstract

Objective: To explore the extent of aggression (verbal abuse) and violence (physical abuse) directed toward General Medicine physicians by their patients, to identify causes and consequences of such behaviour on physicians' professional work and to establish prevention measures. Method: All general medicine physicians who attended an educational seminar from 28 to 29 February 2015 in Belgrade were given the questionnaire and asked to complete it. Results: 411 general medicine physicians have completed the questionnaire. Both genders were included: 86.37% of them were women. Majority of the participants were in the age group of 51-60 years (45.25%), mean age was 49.27±9.32. Mean number of years in practice was 21.10±9.87. Most of them specialized in General Medicine (62.30%). 85.40% of physicians have encountered some kind of abuse during their work and there was no significant difference regarding physicians' gender or qualifications. In the preceding year 62.3% of participants have encountered aggression or violence in their workplace. Aggression was reported by 82.97% and violence by 8.83% of participants. There were no statistically significant differences in terms of physicians' gender (p=0.859), type of workplace (p=0.097), number of years in practice (p=0.640) and specialty (p=0.537). In 83.2% of cases acts of aggression or violence have been committed by patients and in 40.2% by members of their families. In 44.2% of these cases nobody tried to assist the physicians and even less so if they were male doctors (p=0.05). The most common causes were: patients' dissatisfaction (60.4%), long waiting time for examination (37.0%) and patient's alcohol or drug intoxication (35.0%). The most common consequence of this on physicians was decreased satisfaction with their job (53.6%). Prevention measures for this issue would be: decreasing of the number of consultations per day (56.0%), introduction of a new 'in line of duty' status for healthcare workers (55.60%), providing security personnel (49.3%) and stricter punishments for such offences (50.0%). Conclusion: Aggression and violence directed toward physicians are largely present, predominantly in the form of aggression. The most often offenders are patients, the cause is patients' dissatisfaction with their unfulfilled expectations and the most common consequence on physicians is decreased satisfaction with the job they are doing.