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Verbal, Physical and Sexual Abuse Status Against Operating Room Nurses in Turkey

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Abstract

This descriptive study investigated the verbal, physical and sexual abuse status against operating room nurses. Health care professionals work in stressful environments with managerial problems and abuse. This can negatively affect patient care, the institution and the health care system. Of the 575 nurses that work in the 32 hospitals where approval was granted from the Ministry of Health, 380 nurses consented to filling out the questionnaires and thus composed the sample for this study. The data obtained from this study was evaluated with the SPSS 15.0 program. Descriptive statistics were given as number, percentage, mean and standard deviation. The comparison of categorical data was done by the Khi-square test, and the comparison of continuous variables was done with the T Test. According to the data obtained from our study, the percentages of verbal, physical and sexual abuse were 84.5, 25.5 and 32.6 % respectively. Our findings demonstrated that the origin of all types of abuse was the physicians. Abused nurses stated that the abuse they were exposed to affected their relationship with that person, decreased their work performance and lead to thoughts of quiting nursing. Verbally abused nurses expressed that they solved the problem by talking with the person about their behavior and the physically abused expressed that they reported the event to the people of authority. Sexually abused victims reported that they tried to solve the problem by pretending it never happened. The most common physical disorders that abused nurses experienced were headache, fatigue, insomnia and stomach pain. While nurses who had the least years of experience were exposed to verbal abuse, nurses who had more experience were exposed to physical abuse. Also in our study, women were found to be most commonly exposed to verbal and sexual abuse, whereas men were commonly exposed to physical abuse. Recommendations were made based on the results of this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nursing, Gülhane Military Medical Academy, 06010, Ankara, Turkey

    Yasemin Eda Tekin

  2. Department of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Gazi University, 06500, Ankara, Turkey

    Hulya Bulut

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  1. Yasemin Eda Tekin
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  2. Hulya Bulut
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Correspondence to Yasemin Eda Tekin.

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Tekin, Y.E., Bulut, H. Verbal, Physical and Sexual Abuse Status Against Operating Room Nurses in Turkey. Sex Disabil 32, 85–97 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11195-014-9339-7

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