Journal of Nursing & Care

Prevalence of Violence in Nursing in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Jaroslav Pekara*, Petr Hulinsky, Marie Treslova

Background: Violence in nursing care is a complicated and dangerous risk, especially for general nurses. The incidence of violence has been rising in the past few years. The article deals with the issue of violence during mutual contact of a patient and a nurse in the Czech Republic. Its main aim is to map violence which appears only during mutual contact between general nurses and patients. The secondary aims were to identify the most common problems in these situations and to find possibilities to solve them. The aims were tested by four goals.
Objective: To describe violence in Czech Republic in nursing and to appear conditions during mutual contact between general nurses and patients.
Methods: Data from questionnaires were available on 896 nurses from different departments of Czech Republic. Stated goals were verified by chi-squared test (p=0.001).
Results: Female and male health care workers alike experience violence in providing nursing care in the Czech Republic. General Nurses in the Czech Republic are the professional group that is most exposed to verbal violence (p>0.001). Violence in health care in the Czech Republic is thus mostly a problem of nursing care. The nurses with secondary education are exposed to violence more often than nurses with tertiary education (p>0.001). There is possible to prepare nurses for dealing with a violent patient and prevent violence by choosing the correct style of communication. Based on these results, we created a short educational programme that provides nurses with communication skills which deescalate violence. Nurses can then practise these skills independently during contact with a violent patient. The results of quantitative research showed a lack of reporting of violent situations and poor support from the health care facilities management personnel.
Conclusion: The main recommendation for the practice is to educate future health care workers efficiently and on all levels of the education system. Violence in nursing care is a complicated and dangerous risk, especially for general nurses. We found out that female nurses are not more susceptible to violence than male health workers. We proved that general nurses face violence (verbal violence) above all other healthcare professionals in the Czech Republic, so that it is possible to approve that the violence is not a problem of the health care but above all of the nursing care.