Aggression in Healthcare

Aggression In Healthcare

Workplace safety in healthcare settings usually involves patients being aggressive or violent towards healthcare professionals, or staff members being aggressive against each other. Patient-on-professional aggression commonly involves direct verbal abuse, although deliberate and severe physical violence has been documented. Staff-on-staff aggression may be passive, such as a failure to return a telephone call from a disliked colleague, or indirect, such as engaging in backbiting and gossip.

Aggression was, in 1968, described by Moyer as "a behaviour that causes or leads to harm, damage or destruction of another organism" (Weinshenker and Siegel 2002). Human aggression has more recently been defined as "any behaviour directed toward another individual that is carried out with the proximate intent to cause harm" (Anderson and Bushman 2002).

The definition can be extended to include the fact that aggression can be physical, verbal, active or passive and be directly or indirectly focussed at the victim–with or without the use of a weapon, and possibly incorporating psychological or emotional tactics (Rippon 2000). It requires the perpetrator to have intent, and the victim to attempt evasion of the actions. Hence harm that is accidental cannot be considered aggressive as it does not incorporate intent, nor can harm implicated with intent to help (for example the pain experienced by a patient during dental treatment) be classed as aggression as there is no motivation to evade the action (Anderson and Bushman 2002). A description of workplace violence by Wynne, Clarkin, Cox, & Griffiths (1997), explains it to involve incidents resulting in abuse, assault or threats directed towards staff with regard to work–including an explicit or implicit challenge to their safety, well-being or health (Oostrom and Mierlo 2008).