Testing the Feasibility of a Smartphone Application for Collecting Data on Occupational Violence Exposure Among Nurses

Occupational violence is a serious public health issue that affects many healthcare workers worldwide. Current research suggests that nurses are disproportionately affected by this issue and that there are significant challenges associated with existing reporting systems for monitoring and detecting occupational violence in hospitals. To address these methodological challenges, we collected incident data from 108 nurses and midwives working at a large tertiary hospital in Queensland, Australia using a commercial mobile application. A total of 111 records of occupational violence were recorded, with evidence of temporal clustering of incidents in the weekdays and afternoon hours. Our findings suggest that this approach is suitable for collecting granular information about exposure to occupational violence and may be transferable to other healthcare groups and settings.