Patterns of Violence against Health Workers and Awareness about Anti-Violence Regulations in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Introduction: There is limited data on the awareness of healthcare workers about the regulations that concern violence against healthcare workers in Saudi Arabia. The aim of this study is to assess the effect and types of violence against primary healthcare workers and possible association with the work experience of health workers. Moreover, this study investigated the response of the health workers and their knowledge regarding the policies and regulations of the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional study design that targets all healthcare workers who work in primary healthcare centers or outpatient units of governmental hospitals, during the proposed study period from April – May 2022. The sample was stratified according to the percentage of each profession in the statistics of the Ministry of Health. A structured online questionnaire was sent to healthcare workers in order to collect data about study variables. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, and percentages were calculated to summarize nominal and ordinal data, while mean, median, and standard deviation or the range to describe numerical variables. Chi-squared test was applied to evaluate the association between the determinants and the outcome variables at the level of 0.05 significance.
Results: A total of 288 health workers in primary health centers were recruited in this study. The majority of the health workers were females. About 23% of the health workers were doctors, while 45% were nurses and the rest were distributed over other health professions. The prevalence of workplace violence among health workers was 46.7%, of them, about 90% reported verbal violence, 34.3% have been intimidated, and 3% reported physical violence. Regarding the reporting system, 40.2% of the health workers said their institute has reporting system of violence, but 27.3% said they don’t know. Furthermore, among those who reported the presence of the system, 47.3% did not know how to use this reporting system. The outdoor workplace was associated with a higher percentage of physical violence than the indoor workplace.
Conclusions: The prevalence of violence among healthcare workers is high as slightly less than half of the workers were exposed to some sort of violence, particularly verbal violence. Regarding the reporting system, more than one-quarter of the health workers did not know if their institute has a reporting system of violence or not.