Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Mar;80(3):1212-1221.
doi: 10.1111/jan.15900. Epub 2023 Oct 9.

Violence and aggression against nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America. From the emerging leaders program of the Interamerican Society of Cardiology (SIAC)

Shyla Gupta  1 , Sebastián Garcia-Zamora  2 , Jorge Juarez-Lloclla  3 , Juan Farina  4 , Melanie Foisy  5 , Laura Pulido  6 , Victoria Ramos  7 , Franco Merschon  8 , Josefina B Parodi  9 , María Elena Sanchez  10 , Ana Munera  11 , Daniel Piskorz  12 , Daniel José Pineiro  13 , Gary Tse  14   15   16 , Ricardo Lopez-Santi  17 , Adrian Baranchuk  5
Affiliations

Violence and aggression against nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America. From the emerging leaders program of the Interamerican Society of Cardiology (SIAC)

Shyla Gupta et al. J Adv Nurs. 2024 Mar.

Abstract

Introduction: During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, healthcare providers have overcome difficult experiences such as workplace violence. Nurses are particularly vulnerable to workplace violence. The objective of this study was to characterize violence and aggression against nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America.

Methods: An electronic cross-sectional survey was conducted in 19 Latin American countries to characterize the frequency and type of violent actions against front-line healthcare providers.

Results: Of the original 3544 respondents, 16% were nurses (n = 567). The mean age was 39.7 ± 9.0 years and 79.6% (n = 2821) were women. In total, 69.8% (n = 2474) worked in public hospitals and 81.1% (n = 2874) reported working regularly with COVID-19 patients. Overall, about 68.6% (n = 2431) of nurses experienced at least one episode of workplace aggression during the pandemic. Nurses experienced weekly aggressions more frequently than other healthcare providers (45.5% versus 38.1%, p < .007). Nurses showed a trend of lower reporting rates against the acts of aggression suffered (p = .076). In addition, nurses were more likely to experience negative cognitive symptoms after aggressive acts (33.4% versus 27.8%, p = .028). However, nurses reported considering changing their work tasks less frequently compared to other healthcare providers after an assault event (p = .005).

Conclusion: Workplace violence has been a frequent problem for all healthcare providers during COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America. Nurses were a particularly vulnerable subgroup, with higher rates of aggressions and cognitive symptoms and lower rate of complaints than other healthcare providers who suffered from workplace violence. It is imperative to develop strategies to protect this vulnerable group from aggressions during their tasks.

Keywords: COVID-19; aggression; nurses; survey study; workplace violence.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

REFERENCES

    1. Alexander, R. K., & Diefenbeck, C. (2020). Challenging stereotypes: A glimpse into nursing's difficulty recruiting African Americans. Journal of Professional Nursing, 36, 15-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2019.06.010
    1. Baptiste, D. L., Commodore-Mensah, Y., Alexander, K. A., Jacques, K., Wilson, P. R., Akomah, J., Sharps, P., & Cooper, L. A. (2020). COVID-19: Shedding light on racial and health inequities in the USA. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 29(15-16), 2734-2736. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15351
    1. Chen, Y., Zhang, Y., & Jin, R. (2020). Professional identity of male nursing students in 3-year colleges and junior male nurses in China. American Journal of Men's Health, 14, 1557988320936583. https://doi.org/10.1177/1557988320936583
    1. Cheng, M.-L., Tseng, Y.-H., Hodges, E., & Chou, F.-H. (2016). Lived experiences of novice male nurses in Taiwan. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 29, 46-53. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043659616676318
    1. Cooper, A. L., Brown, J. A., Rees, C. S., & Leslie, G. D. (2020). Nurse resilience: A concept analysis. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 29(4), 553-575. https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.12721

LinkOut - more resources