The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on temporal trends of workplace violence against healthcare workers in the emergency department

Abstract

Background: It is known that there has been an increase over the years in attacks by patients admitted to the emergency department (ED) on healthcare workers; it is unclear what effect the COVID-19 pandemic has on these attacks.

Aim: to verify through a long-term time analysis the effect of COVID-19 on ED attacks on healthcare workers.

Mothods: a quasi-experimental interrupted time-series analysis on attacks on healthcare workers was performed from January 2017 to August 2021. The main outcome was the monthly rate of attacks on healthcare workers per 1000 general accesses. The pandemic outbreak was used as an intervention point.

Results: 1002 attacks on healthcare workers in the ED were recorded. The rate of monthly attacks on total accesses increased from an average of 13.5 (SD 6.6) in the pre-COVID-19 era to 27.2 (SD 9.8) in the pandemic months, p < 0.001. The pandemic outbreak led to a significant increase in attacks on healthcare workers from 0.05/1000 attacks per month (p = 0.018), to 4.3/1000 attacks per month (p = 0.005).

Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant increase in attacks on healthcare workers in the ED. Trends compared to pre-pandemic months do not seem to indicate a return to normality. Health institutions and policymakers should develop strategies to improve the safety of the working environment in hospitals and EDs.

Keywords: Aggressions; COVID-19; Healtcar workers; Pandemic; SARS-CoV-2; Violence.