Exposure to violence affects employees and has implications for the quality of care provided.

This study aims to describe the effects of workplace violence on nurses in psychiatric and emergency departments.

This was a cross-sectional and descriptive study involving 60 nurses practising in the psychiatry and emergency services at the Hedi Chaker and Habib Borguiba University Hospital in Sfax. We collected the socio-demographic and professional data of the participants using a pre-established questionnaire.

The average age was 35 years and 51 % of respondents were female. Ninety-three percent of the respondents were victims of an act of violence. The violence was verbal in 90%, physical in 70%, psychological in 62% and sexual in 11% of cases. The classification of acts of violence according to the scale of seriousness of the national observatory of violence in health care revealed a predominance of level 1 violence characterised by insults (66%) and level 2 violence with threats to physical integrity (65%). Level 3 violence (physical violence) was the most frequent (70%). Two cases of level 4 violence with knives were reported. These acts of violence generated wounds in 21%, fractures in 10%, haematomas in 10% and bruises in 8% of cases. Thirty-six nurses (60%) reported that the act of violence was responsible for a feeling of insecurity.

The results of this study indicate the need for hospital center managers to set up organizational policies against workplace violence and to apply them in a rigorous and transparent manner.

No significant relationships.