Sağlık Çalışanlarına Yönelik Şiddetle Mücadele: Ankara Bilkent Şehir Hastanesi Örneğinde Sorunlar ve Çözümler

Abstract

Violence against health workers is one of the important social problems of the 21st century with its multidimensional variables affecting the problem itself. With the complex dynamics of the phenomenon of violence and the sensitivity of health services, it has become a resistant issue that cannot be solved only with security measures. Although various steps have been taken in our country for the last fifteen years to solve the problem, it is unfortunately difficult to talk about a decrease in the frequency or severity of violent incidents. With this research, the reasons why the problem of violence in healthcare shows a resistant to solution, the factors affecting the problem, the effects of violence and what needs to be done to solve the problem are questioned in the case of Ankara Bilkent City Hospital. In the study, the mixed research method is adopted. The quantitative phase of the research consists the analysis of the violent incidents against employees in the hospital between 2022 and 2023. In this context, 623 incidents of violence over 2 years and 752 employees who were victimized in these incidents were analyzed. Almost all of the incidents, 91% involved only verbal violence and one third of the incidents took place in emergency services. Violence was mostly directed against physicians; male healthcare workers were more frequently exposed to physical violence while female healthcare workers were more frequently exposed to verbal violence. In the qualitative phase of the study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 healthcare workers who had been exposed to violence at work. The experiences and opinions of the employees regarding their experiences of violence were obtained; the causes and consequences of the problem of violence in health in our country and their thoughts and suggestions regarding the solution of the problem were questioned. From the interviews, it was understood that healthcare professionals address the problem of violence in health from a broad framework and do not evaluate it independently from the problems seen in the society. The most important consequence of violence in healthcare is the loss of qualified health workers and the decrease in the quality of health services provided. It has been observed that current practices and measures do not focus on the underlying issues, and that interventions made after the occurrence of violence do not reduce violence. It has been observed that joint interventions of different institutions and organizations are needed to combat the problem, and that only security measures or increases in the prescribed criminal sanctions are not sufficient. The need for efforts to increase health literacy in the community and in-service trainings for employees on communication, stress management and de-escalation techniques came to the fore.