A Study on the Relationship between WorkplaceViolence and Conflict Handling Intention among Hospital Staff

• Main Authors: Hui- Mei Lin, 林惠美
• Other Authors: Su-Hsing Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/03836604610778130163

碩士 === 長榮大學 === 職業安全與衛生學系碩士班 === 100 === Workplace violence is regarded as one of the occupational hazards. Workplace violence occurred in health care industry are four times higher than in other industries. Interpersonal conflicts are common in social interactions. Conflicts may arise from the differences in personal backgrounds, job characteristics and perceptions of the events. Conflicts may even lead to violence behaviors. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of workplace violence, conflict handling intentions and the associated factors. This is a cross-sectional study where 950 purposive sampled employees, with at least one year work experience from one of the regional teaching hospitals in southern Taiwan, were invited to participate in a questionnaire survey. Response rate of this survey was 91.26%. The results showed that the most common conflict handling intentions were the type of integration and compromise, and the least common was the type of domination. During the previous year, verbal abuse (prevalence of 22.5%) was the most common type of violence, followed by sexual harrasement (2.7%) and physical violence (2.5%). Overall, patients and their relatives or friends were the primary source of violence (48-73%), yet violence between employees was also accounted for（27-52%）. Further analysis revealed that on the domination tendency, those who had experienced physical violence were higher than those who did not (p<0.01); contrarily on the avoidant tendency, those who did not experienced physical violence and verbal abuse were higher than those who did not. The reporting on the violence events was 36.77%. Results of this study showed that the sources of violence not only came from patients and their relatives, but also from coworkers. This situation should not be overlooked. The study results can provide workplace managers the basis for prevention of workplace violence. Health care industry should face and deal with workplace violence and employees,mental and physical conditions. We suggest that health care industry establish a well-planed workplace violence reporting system and a culture of“zero tolerance”to violence to provide safety workplace environment and good quality of medical service.