Ghanaian nurses’ emigration intentions: The role of workplace violence

A cross-sectional study was conducted in Ghana to examine the impact of workplace violence on nurses’ emigration intentions from 2013 to 14. A combination of purposive and random sampling techniques was used to select 12 public hospitals and 592 professional nurses. The results showed that 48.9% of the participants had emigration intentions. Junior nurses were 2.8 times more likely to have emigration intentions compared to senior nurses, and those who experienced violence were also more likely than their counterparts who were not involved in such incidents (physical 2.1 times; verbally abused 1.8 times and sexually harassed 2.4 times) to have intentions to emigrate. Binary logistic regression showed that workplace violence is a significant predictor of nurses’ emigration intentions. These results reiterate the need for pragmatic measures to curb workplace violence against nurses.