title: Staff attitudes towards aggression in health care: a review of the literature.
abstract: The aim of this literature review was to explore the attitudes of health care workers towards inpatient aggression and to analyse the extent to which attitudes, as defined from a theoretical point of view, were addressed in the selected studies. Databases from 1980 up to the present were searched, and a content analysis was done on the items of the selected studies. The concepts 'cognition' and 'attitude' from the framework of 'The Theory of Reasoned Action' served as categories. The self-report questionnaire was the most common instrument used and three instruments specifically designed to measure attitudes were found. These instruments lacked profound validity testing. From a total of 74 items, two thirds focussed on cognitions and only a quarter really addressed attitudes towards aggression. Research was particularly concerned with the cognitions that nurses had about aggression, and attitudes were studied only to a limited extent. Researchers used different instruments, which makes it difficult to compare results across settings.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medical Sciences, Department of Health Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. g.jansen@med.rug.nl
authors.forename: G J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Jansen
authors.forename: T W N
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Dassen
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Groot Jebbink
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients / Q000523:psychology*; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D008605:Mental Health Services; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011568:Psychiatric Nursing