Types of Workplace Violence
Occupational health researchers have classified workplace violence into the following 4 types:
Type 1 - Criminal Intent: The perpetrator has no legitimate relationship to the business or its employees, and is usually committing a crime in conjunction with the violence (robbery, shoplifting, trespassing). Examples: a nurse is assaulted in the hospital parking garage; a home health care nurse is mugged while conducting a home visit.
Type 2 - Client-on-Worker: This type is the most common in healthcare settings. This includes patients, their family members, and visitors, and will be referred to as Client-on-Worker Violence. Example: An elderly patient verbally abused a nurse and pulled her hair when she prevented him from leaving the hospital to go home in the middle of the night.
Type 3 - Worker-on-Worker: between coworkers is commonly referred to Worker-on-Worker violence. It includes bullying, and frequently manifests as verbal and emotional abuse that is unfair, offensive, vindictive, and/or humiliating though it can range all the way to homicide. Worker-on-worker violence is often directed at persons viewed as being "lower on the food chain" such as in a supervisor to supervisor or doctor to nurse though incidents of peer to peer violence is also common. Example: A doctor continually humiliates a staff nurse in front of her peers.
Type 4 - Personal Relationship: In Type 4 violence, the perpetrator has a relationship to the healthcare worker outside of work that spills over to the work environment. Example: A disturbed family member whose father had died in surgery walked into the emergency department and fired a small-caliber handgun, killing a nurse and an emergency medical technician and wounding the emergency physician.
Case Reports
Here are some recent case reports provided by NIOSH:
- An elderly patient verbally abused a nurse and pulled her hair when she prevented him from leaving the hospital to go home in the middle of the night.
- An agitated psychotic patient attacked a nurse, broke her arm, and scratched and bruised her.
- A disturbed family member whose father had died in surgery at the community hospital walked into the emergency department and fired a small-caliber handgun, killing a nurse and an emergency medical technician and wounding the emergency physician.
These circumstances of hospital violence differ from the circumstances of workplace violence in general. In other workplaces such as convenience stores and taxicabs, violence most often relates to robbery. Violence in hospitals usually results from patients and occasionally from their family members who feel frustrated, vulnerable, and out of control.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
1-2. Which violence type is most common in the healthcare setting?
- Type 1 - Criminal Intent
- Type 2 - Client-on-Worker
- Type 3 - Worker-on-Worker
- Type 4 - Personal Relationship
You forgot to answer the question!