Violence against physicians in Jordan: An analytical cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: High numbers of violence incidents against physicians are reported annually in both developing and developed countries. In Jordan, studies conducted on healthcare workers involved small number of physicians and showed higher percentages of violence exposure when compared to other investigations from the Middle East. This is a large study aiming to comprehensively analyze the phenomenon in the physicians’ community to optimize future strategies countering it. METHODS: The study has a cross sectional, questionnaire-based design. It targeted 969 doctors from different types of healthcare Jordanian institutions in Amman, between May to July, 2019. The questionnaire was designed to evaluate properties of reported abuse cases in terms of abusers, timing, and type of abuse, in addition to the consequences of this abuse. RESULTS: Prevalence of exposure to violence in the last year among doctors was 63.1% (611 doctors). 423 (67.2%) of male doctors had an experience of being abused during the last 12 months, compared to 188 (55.3%) of females (p< 0.001). Governmental centers showed the highest prevalence. Among 356 doctors working in governmental medical centers, 268 (75.3%) reported being abused (p< 0.001), and they were more abused verbally (63.5%) and physically (10.4%) compared to other medical sectors (p <0.001). The mean score of how worried doctors are regarding violence at their workplace from 1 to 5 was 3.1 ± 1.3, and only 129 (13.3%) believed that they are protected by law. CONCLUSIONS: The study emphasized on the higher rate of violence against physicians in the governmental sector, in addition to the negative effect of abuse on their performance. Moreover, male physicians had higher incidence of workplace abuse. Therefore, strategies that ease and promote the real application of anti-violence policies should become our future target.