Workplace violence against cardiovascular nurses during Covid-19 pandemic

Type of funding sources: Other. Main funding source(s): The National Federation of Orders for Nursing Professions (FNOPI - Italia)

Workplace violence (WPV) impacts negatively both healthcare workers and healthcare organizations. Nurses are the most exposed healthcare workers to vertical WPV, also during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Describing the WPV against nurses and its predictive factors in cardiovascular settings during COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.

This is a secondary analysis conducted in cardiovascular hospital settings from a larger national study between January and April 2021. Data were collected through the Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index (PES-NWI; Likert scale 1 to 4) and the adapted version of the Violence in Emergency Nursing and Triage (VENT) Questionnaire. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses were conducted.

The analysis was conducted on 360 cardiovascular nurses (76.7% female; mean age 42.6 years, SD 10.8). Thirty per cent (n=108) of them reported WPV in last year and/or last week and 14.2% (n=51) only in last week. The number of patients was higher for nurses with WPV (mean difference [MD] +1.9; p = .030). The work environment was significantly worse for nurses with WPV: mean PES-NWI composite score (MD -0.2; p<.001); PES-NWI subscales: staffing and resource adequacy (MD -0.3; p<.001); nursing foundations for quality of care (MD -0.2; p = .005); nurse participation in hospital affairs (MD -0.3; p<.001); physician-nurse relationship (MD -0.2; p = .004). Multiple linear regression demonstrated that the risk of WPV increases when a clear nursing philosophy was not completely implemented in cardiovascular setting (odds ratio [OR] 5.29; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.07-26.05; p = .040) and the nurses restrain patients (OR 2.49; 95% CI, 1.04-5.97, p = .041). The risk of WPV decreases when protectives glasses were present (OR 0.36; 95% CI 0.19-0.70, p = .003).

Public healthcare services should reduce WPV by investing in improving the nurse work environment. Integrated and multimodal programs of prevention and management of WPV are useful to address it.