Workplace violence against nurses in health care and the role of human resource management: A systematic review of the literature

AIM: To provide insights into how workplace violence has an impact on nurses and to inform human resource management about developing comprehensive strategies to manage and mitigate violence. DESIGN: A systematic review of the literature to appraise contemporary studies, source data and synthesize findings for human resource management to implement practices to mitigate violence against nurses in the healthcare sector. DATA SOURCES: Searches were conducted using ProQuest, Business Source Complete (EBSCO), Emerald Insight, PsycINFO (ProQuest), ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar. Our search was delimited to refereed journal articles and government reports over the last 15 years from 2004-2019 and included a total of 71 articles. REVIEW METHODS: The research team systematically reviewed each article and relative reports, eliminating any not considered relevant to nurses. This systematic review is associated with and reflects contemporary issues around nurses, violence, and human resource management practice. RESULTS: In the studies we found high incidents of violence against nurses in the workplace. However, human resource management fundamentally services as an administrator, managing compliance and does not do enough to methodically mitigate and manage acts of violence in the workplace and its effects on nurses' mental health. CONCLUSIONS: This systematic review contributes to the literature on violence in health care and proposes that human resource management must explore and implement practices towards mitigating violence against nurses. IMPACT: This systematic review will influence how human resource management currently manages violence against nurses and the increasing number of persons requiring health care due to the ageing population and decline in the number of nurses. It will also have an impact on action research to engage in a cycle of continuous improvement that supports eliminating violence against nurses (and all others) in the healthcare sector.