Work-related assault injuries among nurses.
Work-related violence is a major public health problem; however, there is a serious deficiency in the knowledge of risk factors for this problem. The purpose of this case-control study was to identify risk factors for work-related assault injuries among nurses. We used unconditional logistic regression to model the dependence of work-related assault injuries on each exposure of interest and the respective confounders. We found a decreased rate for the presence of security personnel (RR = 0.40; 95% CI = 0.19-0.82). We found increased rates for the following factors: the perception that administrators considered assault to be part of the job (RR = 8.14; 95% CI = 3.76-17.60); having received assault prevention training in the current workplace (RR = 4.64; 95% CI = 2.33-9.23); a high (>5) vs. low (<2) patient/personnel ratio (RR = 2.54; 95% CI = 1.13-5.70); working predominantly with patients with mental illness (RR = 3.5; 95% CI = 1.41-8.85); and working with patients who had more than 1- to 4-week and more than 4-week lengths of stay in the institution vs. <1 day (RR = 8.85; 95% CI = 1.58-49.52 and 4.25; 95% CI = 1.17-15.39, respectively).
Lee
S S
SS
Regional Injury Prevention Research Center, Division of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455, USA.
Gerberich
S G
SG
Waller
L A
LA
Anderson
A
A
McGovern
P
P
D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008910:Minnesota; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009729:Nursing; D014754:Violence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*