Citation

Campbell CL. Trauma Violence Abuse 2017; 18(4): 445-456.

Affiliation

Veterans Health Administration, The Villages Outpatient Clinic, The Villages, FL, USA colleen.campbell4@va.gov.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1524838015627148

PMID

26762136

Abstract

Patient-perpetrated violence and aggression toward health-care workers, specifically in noninstitutional health-care settings, cause concerns for both health-care providers and the clients whom they serve. Consequentially, this presents a public affairs problem for the entire health-care system, which the current research has failed to adequately address. While the literature overwhelmingly supports the assertion that accurate incident reporting is critical to fully understanding patient violence and aggression toward health-care providers, there is limited research examining provider decision making related to reporting incidents of patient violence and aggression targeted toward the provider. There is an even greater paucity of research specifically examining this issue in noninstitutional health-care settings. It is therefore the objective of this review to examine this phenomenon across disciplines and service settings in order to offer a comprehensive review of incident reporting and to examine rationales for providers reporting or failing to report instances of patient violence and aggression toward health-care providers.

Language: en