BACKGROUND: Much of the research on violence committed by patients and
family members against healthcare providers in the hospital focus on the
frequency and severity of incidents plus personal, perpetrator, and hospital
characteristics. The literature lacks research on those factors that make
healthcare providers in hospitals feel safe from workplace violence
committed by patients and family members.
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this project is to design an instrument to
measure the perceptions of personal safety of emergency nurses in the
workplace.
METHODS: To develop the Personal Workplace Safety Instrument for Emergency
Nurses (PWSI EN) an extensive review of the literature was conducted and
recurrent themes identified. Informal focus groups of emergency nurses and
discussions with administrators were conducted to confirm these themes. A
review by workplace violence experts and a pilot test with emergency nurses
was conducted.
RESULTS: The instrument has 31 Likert-scale items to measure the factors of
workplace countermeasures, patient-nurse interactions, and administrative
and judicial support measures. Fifteen demographic questions were developed
to measure characteristics of the nurse and hospital. Results of the expert
panel review yielded high content validity (cumulative validity index =
0.98).
CONCLUSION: The instrument is valid to measure the perceptions of personal
safety in the workplace with emergency nurses.
