Strategies for reducing violence in hospital from the viewpoint of support-administrative staff: A qualitative study

Abstract

Introduction: Today violence is considered as one of the issues relating to health and occupational safety of the people and is also one of the existing occupational hazards in hospital. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate strategies of reducing violence in hospital from the viewpoint of support-administrative staff to take necessary actions for removing and reducing it using the obtained information. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted qualitatively with semi-structured interview and opinions of 10 authorities and employees of support-administrative units in Alzahra Hospital about violence reducing strategies were collected. Thus, the contents were transcribed after interview and then the interview data was reduced and structured using thematic analysis. Results: Views of the people about necessary strategies and actions for reducing violence in hospital were studied and classified as 46 subthemes and 11 themes in three groups: Necessary action for preventing violence, necessary actions at time of violence and necessary actions after violence. Conclusion: Considering high prevalence of violence in hospitals and although it is not possible to remove violence completely, this issue should be considered by the policymakers in the country, suitable reporting system and a proper instruction for preventing and confronting with violence should be prepared in the hospitals and necessary actions particularly necessary actions after violence which have been neglected so far should be taken to reduce probability of stress and violence in hospital considerably.