Patient and visitor aggression de-escalation training for nurses in a teaching hospital in Cairo, Egypt

Dena Ali Abozaid; Mohamed Momen; Nahla Fawzy Abou El Ezz; Hanaa Abdelhakiem Ahmed; Mahi Mahmoud Al-Tehewy; Maged El-Setouhy; Mohamed El-Shinawi; Jon Mark Hirshon; Moustafa El Houssinie

doi:10.1186/s12912-022-00828-y

Patient and visitor aggression de-escalation training for nurses in a teaching hospital in Cairo, Egypt

BMC Nurs. 2022 Mar 18;21(1):63. doi: 10.1186/s12912-022-00828-y.

Affiliations

¹ Community, Environmental and Occupational Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, a national university in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt. denaali@med.asu.edu.eg.
² Community, Environmental and Occupational Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, a national university in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt.
³ Community Health Department, Faculty of Nursing, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
⁴ Department of Family and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Jazan University, Jazan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
⁶ Vice president, Galala University, Suez, Egypt.
⁷ Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Abstract

Background: Workplace violence (WPV) has been recognized as a major occupational hazard worldwide. Healthcare professions are particularly at a higher risk of WPV. Patients and their relatives are commonly the most common perpetrators for WPV against physicians. Trainings on the universal precautions of violence, how to effectively anticipate, recognize and manage potentially violent situation is recommended by OSHA as a part of a written, effective, comprehensive, and interactive WPV prevention program.

Objective: To implement and evaluate the effectiveness of a training session delivered to nurses. The training session aimed to increase nurses' ability to identify potentially violent situations and to effectively manage these situations in a teaching hospital in Egypt.

Methodology: A total of 99 nurses attended the training sessions. Confidence in coping with aggressive patient scale, along with nurses' attitudes toward WPV, were used to assess the effectiveness of the training sessions.

Results: Nurses' perceived confidence to deal with aggression increased after attending the training sessions. Nurses' attitudes toward WPV positively changed after attending the training session.

Conclusion and recommendations: Increasing awareness of the problem among healthcare professions as well as the public is warranted. Violence prevention program with a zero-tolerance policy is warranted.

Keywords: Aggression; Healthcare; Hospitals; Occupational Violence; Training.

Grants and funding

D43 TW007296/TW/FIC NIH HHS/United States