Safety climate and verbal abuse among public hospital-based workers in Costa Rica.
OBJECTIVE
Low levels of safety climate and training have been associated with higher occurrence of occupational-related health outcomes; workplace violence and verbal abuse could be considered an early indicator of escalating psychological workplace violence. We examined whether low level of safety factors were associated with a higher prevalence of verbal abuse at the workplace.


METHODS
We used data from a cross-sectional survey administered among a stratified random sample of 1,000 employees from 10 of the 29 public hospitals in Costa Rica. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated using survey logistic regression models to estimate the association between safety factors and verbal abuse from the following sources: administrators, supervisors, patients, patients' relatives and coworkers.


RESULTS
There was a high prevalence of verbal abuse among the healthcare workforce from both external (i.e., patients and patients' relatives) and internal workplace sources (i.e., coworkers, supervisors and administrators). A low level of safety climate was associated with verbal abuse from all sources with associations ranging from verbal abuse from administrators (OR=6.07; 95%CI: 2.05-17.92) to verbal abuse from patients (OR=2.24; 95%CI: 1.23-4.09).


CONCLUSIONS
These results highlight the need to address organizational characteristics of the workplace that may increase the risk of verbal abuse for the future development of prevention interventions in this setting.
Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, The University of Texas School of Public Health, San Antonio Campus, San Antonio, TX 78229, USA. David.Gimeno@uth.tmc.edu
David
D
Gimeno
Tonatiuh
T
Barrientos-Gutiérrez
Keith D
KD
Burau
Sarah A
SA
Felknor
D000288:Administrative Personnel / Q000193:education / Q000592:standards; D000328:Adult; D003364:Costa Rica / Q000453:epidemiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006779:Hospitals, Public; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009790:Occupations / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015279:Organizational Culture; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011594:Psychometrics; D017751:Safety Management / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000078329:Workforce; D017132:Workplace / Q000523:psychology*