237383

Legal Response of Physicians Towards Workplace Violence during COVID-19 Pandemic in Egypt: A Cross Sectional Study

Article

Last updated: 03 Jan 2025

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Tags

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Abstract

Workplace violence (WPV) is defined by World Medical Association as “an international emergency that undermines the very foundations of health systems and impacts critically on patient's health". The physicians are specifically vulnerable for such acts from patients or even their relatives. WPV has detrimental effects on both health professionals and the quality of health care services administered. Aim: to highlight the problem of assault against doctors and their legal response towards it, generally in medical practice and specifically during COVID 19 pandemic. Methodology: A cross sectional study was done through anonymous self-structured internet-based questionnaire survey on 300 physicians. It included different data as regards sociodemographic data, occurrence of bullying, type of assault and response of the physician towards such assault. Results: About 55% of responders claimed previous exposure to verbal or physical violence, nearly 19% faced verbal violence and 14% faced physical violence ,about 15% notified head of the department while only 9.7% notified police. Almost 80% of the responders were not satisfied by actions taken after notification , and 23% were exposed to bullying due to working during Covid era. All responders (100%) believe that media affect how people deal with physicians. Conclusion: Workplace violence against doctors is escalating vigorously. Under-reporting and lack of security support are the main issues in solving this catastrophic health system problem.

DOI

10.21608/zjfm.2022.128014.1110

Keywords

Workplace violence, legal response, Physicians, COVID-19, Egypt

Authors

First Name

Hanan

Last Name

Salem

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Forensic medicine and clinical toxicology department, Faculty of medicine, Ain shams university, Cairo, Egypt

Email

hanansalem789@yahoo.com

City

-

Orcid

0000-0002-4050-8795

First Name

Reham

Last Name

Nafad

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Department of Forensic Medicine and Clinical Toxicology, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University .Cairo. Egypt.

Email

dr.rehamnafad@hotmail.com

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Sarah

Last Name

Taha

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Department of Forensic Medicine and Clinical Toxicology, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University,Cairo.Egypt

Email

snasrtaha@cu.edu.eg

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

20

Article Issue

2

Related Issue

34769

Issue Date

2022-07-01

Receive Date

2022-03-28

Publish Date

2022-07-01

Page Start

29

Page End

46

Print ISSN

1687-160X

Online ISSN

2536-9849

Link

https://zjfm.journals.ekb.eg/article_237383.html

Detail API

https://zjfm.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=237383

Order

2

Type

Original Article

Type Code

402

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Zagazig Journal of Forensic Medicine

Publication Link

https://zjfm.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Legal Response of Physicians Towards Workplace Violence during COVID-19 Pandemic in Egypt: A Cross Sectional Study

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023