The Workplace Of The Healthcare Profession - 1449 Words

People go into the healthcare profession with the idea that they are going to help people during their hardest times, but those same people often never imagine the dangers they could face as they simply do their job. The number of healthcare workers assaulted by patients has been increasing at an alarming rate. According to Lanctà ´t and Guay, healthcare professionals have more than 16 times the risk of being assaulted (physically, verbally, or sexually) than any other service worker. The International Labour Organization defines workplace violence as â€Å"Any action, incident or behavior that departures from reasonable conduct in which a person is assaulted, threatened, harmed, injured in the course of, or as a direct result of, his or her†¦show more content†¦According to a systematic review of workplace violence in healthcare studies, it has been found that nearly 36% of workplace physical assault survivors find that their physical wellbeing and health decline after t he attack. Surveys have shown that many survivors are hyper-vigilant or overcautious after an attack, leaving them to be less focused on their job and more focused on watching their back. Many survivors also reported that their fear of patients is often generalized to all patients, not just the violent ones, causing an overall reduction of patient care quality to be noted with these healthcare workers (Lanctà ´t and Guay, 2014). Approximately 5-32% of survivors of workplace violence present with the diagnosable symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the attack they faced (Lanctà ´t and Guay, 2014). According to a previous lecture by Catherine S. Wilson, â€Å"as much as 90% of the general population is exposed to a traumatic event during their lifetime.† After these traumatic events, about 8% of males and 20% of females go on to develop PTSD, with symptoms such as decreased interest, hypervigilance, decreased concentration, and flashbacks (Wilson, 2015). All of these symptoms mentioned by Catherine were also found to be prevalent in healthcare professionals that had been the survivor of a violent attack. Though all of the professionals had not been diagnosed with PTSD, they still show signs of facing long-term effects or could