@article{ref1,
title="Safety climate and verbal abuse among public hospital-based workers in Costa Rica",
journal="Work",
year="2012",
author="Gimeno, David and Barrientos-Gutierrez, Tonatiuh and Burau, Keith D. and Felknor, Sarah A.",
volume="42",
number="1",
pages="29-38",
abstract="Objective: Low levels of safety climate and training have been associated with higher occurrence of occupational-related health outcomes; workplace violence and verbal abuse could be considered an early indicator of escalating psychological workplace violence. We examined whether low level of safety factors were associated with a higher prevalence of verbal abuse at the workplace. Methods: We used data from a cross-sectional survey administered among a stratified random sample of 1,000 employees from 10 of the 29 public hospitals in Costa Rica. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated using survey logistic regression models to estimate the association between safety factors and verbal abuse from the following sources: administrators, supervisors, patients, patients' relatives and coworkers. Results: There was a high prevalence of verbal abuse among the healthcare workforce from both external (i.e., patients and patients' relatives) and internal workplace sources (i.e., coworkers, supervisors and administrators). A low level of safety climate was associated with verbal abuse from all sources with associations ranging from verbal abuse from administrators (OR=6.07; 95%CI: 2.05-17.92) to verbal abuse from patients (OR=2.24; 95%CI: 1.23-4.09). Conclusion: These results highlight the need to address organizational characteristics of the workplace that may increase the risk of verbal abuse for the future development of prevention interventions in this setting.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1051-9815",
doi="10.3233/WOR-2012-1324",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/WOR-2012-1324"
}