Exploring the Impact of Workplace Violence in Urban Emergency Departments: A Qualitative Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Workplace violence (WPV) in healthcare, particularly in emergency departments (EDs), is a growing and complex issue that significantly impacts healthcare providers (HCPs). Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the rates of WPV have increased globally, contributing to increased burnout, reduced morale, and heightened challenges in staff retention within EDs. Objective: This study aimed to explore HCPs’ perspectives on WPV in EDs. The insights gathered were intended to inform targeted interventions in a quality improvement initiative focused on addressing WPV in our healthcare institutions. Methods: A qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews was conducted with 52 HCPs across two urban EDs at a multi-site academic health center. Participants from various roles and shifts shared experiences related to safety, leadership, training, and security. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, anonymized, and thematically analyzed to identify key themes surrounding WPV in EDs. Results: The thematic analysis identified four main themes, including (1) Violence is Part of the Job, (2) Leadership Dynamics regarding WPV, (3) Disconnect Among ED Staff During WPV Response, and (4) Enhancing Systems and Culture for Effective WPV Management. These themes provide a comprehensive view of HCPs’ experiences and offer actionable recommendations for healthcare organizations seeking to address WPV. Conclusions: The study provides valuable qualitative insights into WPV in EDs, emphasizing the importance of addressing cultural, structural, and procedural gaps. These findings can guide the development of more supportive and effective strategies to create a safer environment for ED staff. Further rounds of interviews are planned post-intervention to assess changes in HCPs’ perceptions and experiences.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".