TRENDS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST HEALTH-CARE WORKER AND FACILITIES

1 INTRODUCTION 

For hundreds of years paramedical and medical workers have been competing to keep the adversities of humanity at bay. They are the true warriors without which the world couldn’t have persisted the catastrophic episodes like black  death, swine flue, bird flue, cholera, chickenpox, AIDS etc. They are the ones who cared and cured, combated and prevented , during the times of tragic situations where everyone else is advised to , ‘Stay home, Stay safe. Either it is a pharmacist of drugstore who is being verbally abused for not giving off, commonly misused medicine “without prescription” or it is the psychiatrist who deals everyday with the mentally ill patient. Either it is the emergency department physician being blamed by the family for not being able to save patient or it is a junior nurse being bullied by senior nurse of hierarchy. We see clearly that the healthcare sector is most predisposed to violence. Among which, it is the nurse and the psychiatrist who are, most susceptible to victimization because they are the ones who have direct interaction with the patients. According researches the degree interaction has direct relation with violence.  

2 VIOLENCE IN HEALTH-CARE 

 Violence is not just yelling or beating but Violence as described by WHO is "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation. 

It validates that violence is of many types. It could be physical or psychological. The perpetrator could be a single person or a group as in mobbing. It could be caused by a co-worker, a family member, a patient, or others. 

 On one wing where physical violence can easily be shown and being acted upon. The psychological violence is often ignored and less likely to be reported. Because it happens so often to nurses that they have even begin to accept it as the part of their jobs. According to research reports of journal of emergency nursing about 29.9% of registered nurses suffer physical violence whereas about 54.2% of registered nurses had withstand the psychological abuse (verbal abuse). For this reason, psychological violence is silent brutality, which lead health-workers to mental crises like Anxiety, depression and Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), discouraging them to work efficiently or even has led some of them to withdraw their jobs. But worst happen to the hospital which bears a greater cost of this, as they are made to hire and train new staff, also bears costs of rehabilitating services to the suffering healthcare staff members. Due to violence and bullying, immense suffering is caused to complete healthcare system and the quality of healthcare service is also considerably compromised. 

3 CONCERNS 

 Although violence at healthcare has always been there, but today why do we see a sharp rise in trends of violence in healthcare? And why most of these violence are caused by patients? Why Today ironically  we have introduced Artificial Intelligence to the world yet unable to resolve issues like bullying and assaults? Why today we reach to the point of singularity yet failed badly at achieving a psychologically balanced workplace?  

The answer to the puzzle is we have been in some way ignoring psychological health. The psychological stress that start from our faulty education system, follows us up to the level of our workplaces. How can we imagine that it will not happen at hospital setup where there is way too much interaction with suffering humanity? 

4 DISCUSSION 

When we bring patient to the primary setups we are only caring for the apparent (physical) injuries and disorders mostly, without considering the stress patient faces at hospital or any consideration of security-based emergency conditions. We never considered stress, which hold potential for so much destruction. If Temporary stress causes fatigue, then permanent stress leads to disorder. That is the reason why a lot of countries have now begun to take measures to reduce stress in specific. This is the reason that Finland does not allow exams at younger level in its education system. Another country is japan which makes certain period of vacation mandatory at workplace. Because reducing psychological stress can avoid society related issues later. 

Because along the list of factors that aggravate the healthcare violence; psychological stress and defaulted management hold the key positions. This is the reason why most of the healthcare violence is caused by PATIENTS. Because it is so easy to ignore psychological suffering. It is researches that suggest that maltreated children are more likely to indulge or accept the violence and bullying in their adulthood. It is the most crucial factor that needs caution to be taken about. 

5 CONCLUSION 

The sharp rise in trends suggest that we should now start taking measures to cut the root level causes of social collapse, for the betterment of our societies, before it is too late. In the process it is not just the management that need to be improved but also awareness from the level of educational institutes should be started. We are now in an urgent need of adopting systems like mandatoryvacations or a break and maternal leaves for our workplaces , free counsel facility , group communication based activities, awareness seminar to ‘educate’ , as it holds the potential to decrease the violence rate anywhere. It is proven by studies that more likely a bully knows of harm he is causing, the less likely he commits it again. At Last but not the least, the complete avoidance of violence in healthcare is obviously impossible. But it has the potential to become better, if we make the elements of compassion and justice through ‘education’ as a significant part