| Summary: | 碩士 === 弘光科技大學 === 健康事業管理研究所 === 107 === Background: Increasing prevalence of workplace violence in care institutions is an important issue in Taiwan. Workplace violence causes serious work stress for workers and makes the quality of care and worker’s health worse whereas being ignored. The study aimed to analyze the effect of workplace violence and job stress on health among home care assistants.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was developed the research structure by previous literatures. The finally valid samples were 620 home care workers in Taichung City; and data was collected during their on-the-job training courses by self-administered structured questionnaires, which were included personal and work characteristics, workplace violence, job stress, health condition were be analyzed. The statistical software SPSS version 19.0 was used to perform descriptive statistics, Chi-square distribution, correlation analysis and regression analysis.
Results: 69.8% of home care workers had suffered any kind of work-related violence. Verbal violence (35.0%) and sexual harassment (32.4%) were the most common type on job. Further discoveries have shown that individuals that are single (40.2%), non-Minan (43.5%), male (39.5%), with senior high school education at the minimum (37.1%), and have a salary of more than NT$ 30,000 are more likely to suffer from verbal violence. Individuals that are single (38.2%), female (34.6%), aged from 41-45 years old (51.8%), and have more than 10 years of working experience (39.8%) are more likely to suffer from sexual harassment. Verbal violence (p<0.01) or sexual harassment (p<0.001) has significant relevance towards the health conditions of these individuals. Therefore, logistic regression was used to further analyze female home care workers and after controlling certain variables, this study found that individuals aged 45 or below (OR=2.042, p=0.038) and aged 51-55 years old (OR=1.990, p=0.023) that have heavier workloads (OR=1.060, p=0.001) suffer from more musculoskeletal. Individuals that have suffered from physical violence (OR=0.460, p=0.034) have less musculoskeletal.
Conclusion: Workplace violence towards home care workers is a very serious issue as the prevalence rate is nearly 70%. Based on certain characteristics, single home care workers are more likely to suffer from verbal violence or sexual harassment than married home care workers as single home care workers since they possibly lack the skills of interacting with the opposite gender, or are more sensitive towards verbal violence. Therefore, these individuals display more drastic responses towards verbal or physical violence from individuals of the opposite gender. Analysis using logistic regression indicated that individuals under the age of 45 with higher work load are more likely to have musculoskeletal. When younger home care workers take on more strenuous tasks, their bodies may not be able to handle them and easily suffer musculoskeletal possibly due to unrefined technique, lack of experience, and cannot improvise on the spot. It can be deduced that home care workers who are young, single, and do not have enough quality experiences in communicating with others are major factors contributing to musculoskeletal.
Suggestions: The government plans to enhance professional training for home care workers to prevent verbal violence towards these individuals, and establish an online appeal platform to prevent and protect sexual harassment towards home care workers. The government hopes that these measures can enhance the communication capabilities and adaptability of these home care workers to reduce verbal confrontations, and allow them to seek out channels to protect their rights and interests. The reduction of workplace violence towards these young home care workers can lower the amount of risk and damage on their mental and physical health, and protect their professional images.
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