196 Status of violence against healthcare personnel in Bangladesh

Background Workplace violence has appeared as a global problem, and the health sector constitute almost a quarter of all violence at work. In recent days, violence against health care providers in Bangladesh has been triggered and intensified simultaneously. There is very limited data on violence against healthcare workers in the country. Objectives The objectives of the research were to explore the prevalence, patterns and causes that trigger the violence against healthcare personnel and to capture policy makers' views to mitigate the violence to develop responses against those. Methods Quantitative method was used to conduct the study. A total of 1703 healthcare personnel, from 61 randomly selected health facilities of Bangladesh, were interviewed by using a structured questionnaire. Among the respondents 600 were from the tertiary, 847 from the secondary and 256 from primary level health facilities. Data were collected from December 2021 to February 2022. Descriptive analysis was done with the quantitative data and was presented in numbers and proportions. Results Over 80% of the respondents reported that they experienced and/or witnessed violence at the health facility. Most of the respondents (71.9%) reported that attendants were the perpetrators of violence. About 61% of the respondents informed that they experienced and/or witnessed violence more than five times at the health facilities in last 12 months. Highest proportion of the respondents (43.3%) reported that most of the violence occurred in in-patient ward followed by emergency (18.8%) and consulting room (10.9%). About 59% of the respondents informed that violence occurred in the morning. In response to feelings post violence, 34% respondents shared they felt stressed and disturbed. Workload, low awareness of public and unreasonable expectations from health services by the patients or attendants were the major contributing factors for violence. Conclusions Violence in health care is a health system problem in Bangladesh, which affects both health service providers and recipients. As a result, the quality of care becomes affected. To prevent, reduce and manage the violence against health personnel a comprehensive strategy is an urgent need.