Abstract
Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of workplace violence against health care workers, to explore the combined association of work stress, psychological job demands, and social approval with workplace violence and their respective mechanisms among health care workers.Methods: Using data from the Chinese Sixth National Health Service Survey (NHSS) in 2018 conducted among 1,371 health care workers in Sichuan province of China. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect data on health care workers' socio-demographic and work-related characteristics, work stress, psychological job demands, social approval, and workplace violence. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothesized relationship among the variables.Results: The results showed that a total of 77.0% health care workers were exposed to workplace violence. Work stress was directly related to workplace violence (β = 2.167, 95%CI: 1.707, 2.627), while psychological job demands and social approval had indirect associations with workplace violence via work stress [β = 0.427, 95%CI: 0.297, 0.557; β = −0.787, 95%CI: (−0.941)–(−0.633)]. Both psychological job demands (β = 0.197, 95%CI: 0.139, 0.255) and social approval [β = −0.346, 95%CI: (−0.399)–(−0.294)] had direct associations with work stress, while social approval had direct association with psychological job demands [β = −0.085, 95%CI: (−0.136)–(−0.034)]. Psychological job demands mediated the relationship between social approval and work stress.Conclusion: Overall, decreasing workplace violence among health care workers requires to promote interventions to reduce work stress and psychological job demands by improving social approval.
Highlights
Workplace violence is defined as violent events that could invoke implicit or explicit challenge to staff safety, well-being, or health through abusive, threatening, or assaulting behaviors and emotions in their working workplace [1]
We examined the relationships among work stress, psychological job demands, social approval, and workplace violence in health care workers in Sichuan province of China
The results indicated that the relationships of psychological job demands and social approval with workplace violence were both mediated by work stress
Summary
Workplace violence is defined as violent events that could invoke implicit or explicit challenge to staff safety, well-being, or health through abusive, threatening, or assaulting behaviors and emotions in their working workplace [1]. Such violence ranges from physical violence to psychological violence [2]. Psychological violence, on the contrary, includes verbal abuse, bullying/mobbing, harassment and threatening against another person or group. Workplace violence from patient and visitor is a primary occupational hazard for health care workers [4]
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