Abstract

Safe at Work:
The nursing personnel study on health and jobs
Funded by National Institutes of Occupational Health & Safety
(R01 OH007953-01A2)

Cooperating Agencies: Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center & Howard County General Hospital.

Abstract
Workplace violence, including workplace intimate partner violence, has major long-term health and employment outcomes and affects nursing personnel in significant numbers. By affecting productivity, absenteeism and job satisfaction, workplace violence also may significantly affect nursing personnel retention and therefore the nursing shortage. However, the risk and protective factors for these outcomes have rarely been examined prospectively with self report data in order to address underreporting issues. This study will use a self report survey to identify nursing personnel at a large urban medical institution who have experienced workplace violence during the past year and follow them prospectively for another year. These survivors (N = 1100; 872 retained) will be compared with a random sample (N = 600; 400 remaining WPV free and retained over time) who have never experienced workplace violence in terms of health (injury, physical and mental health symptoms and medical records), and employment (productivity, job satisfaction, burnout, lost work time, intent to stay in employment, and return to work) outcomes, controlling for lifetime trauma and prior health and employment status, with potential mediators and moderators (social support, obtaining counseling and workplace response) assessed with multivariate cross-sectional and longitudinal SEM and growth curve analytic techniques. Prevalence and descriptions of the episodes of workplace violence will be obtained, including type (physical, sexual, emotional, harassment, stalking, vicarious violence), injury, reporting, organizational response, and any interventions received. Those experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) at the workplace (including stalking) also will be compared with other workplace violence survivors, survivors of IPV outside of the workplace, and those who have never experienced either IPV or workplace violence. Self reported descriptions of violent incidents also will be compared to any health and workplace records of the events (with permission of participants) and a sub-sample (N = 30) of victims of WPV will be interviewed in depth over time with the qualitative analytic results combined with quantitative.