THE IMPACT OF TRAINING PROGRAM ON NURSES' ATTITUDES TOWARD WORKPLACE VIOLENCE IN A MILITARY HOSPITAL
Background: Workplace violence is a prevalent problem among nurses in health care organizations. It has a negative impact on organizations and individuals. Nurses' attitudes toward workplace violence are still inadequately explored, and has an impact in preventing, managing the violent incidents and the quality of delivered nursing care. Thus, an educational training program is needed to improve nurses' attitudes toward workplace violence.
Aim: To assess the impact of training program on nurses' attitudes toward workplace violence in a military hospital.
Methods: Non-experimental one group pre-test post-test design was used. One hundred nurses working in King Hussein Medical Center were recruited in stratified random sampling to participate in this study. Self-reported questionnaire "Attitudes Toward Patient Physical Assault" was introduced before the training program and five weeks after. One day training program was adopted from world Health Organization WHO (2004) "preventing violence: a guide to implementing and recommendations of the world report on violence and health". Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis and paired t-test was used to assess the impact of training program analysis.
Results: A total of 97 nurses completed the study. Results revealed significant impact of training program on nurses' attitudes towards workplace violence (t=6.62, df=96, p= 000). Sixty four of nurses exposed to verbal abuse and 7.2% to physical abuse by patients, 63.9% of nurses exposed to verbal abuse and 3.1% to physical abuse by patient's relatives. Most of violent incidents occurred during day duty and during delivering nursing care (40.2% and 32%, respectively). Major source of emotional support was nursing team (88.7%) and nursing management (48.5%) for legal support.
Conclusion: This study showed that workplace violence is prevalent phenomenon, patients and their relatives are the most common cause of violent incidents. The training program has a significant impact in improvement nurses' attitudes toward workplace violence.
Implications: Further studies should focus on nurses' attitudes toward workplace violence. Prevention and management of workplace violence should be educated in undergraduate curriculum and be trained in in-service education program. Moreover, administrators and policy makers should empower nurses to report the incident.
Keywords: Workplace violence, Nurses, Military hospitals, Attitudes, Training program