Characteristics of International Staff Victims of Psychiatric Patient Assaults: Review of Published Findings, 2017–2022

Abstract

Psychiatric patient assaults on staff are a worldwide occupational hazard for health care staff that results in medical injury, human suffering, and dollar cost expense. International research through 2000-2017 documented the continued frequency of these assaults and a continuing high risk for nursing personnel. This present paper reviewed the international published literature on staff victims of patient assaults during the next five-year period of 2017-2022. There were 39,034 assaults on 34,679 employee victims. The findings indicate that assaults on staff remain a serious worldwide issue as it has been since the 1990s and that nursing personnel continued to be at greater risk. Aggression management approaches, post-incident interventions, and an updated methodological inquiry are presented. Keywords Assaults • International studies • Psychiatric patients • Staff victimsReview articles of data-based research from 1995 to 2017 document the continuing occurrence of assaults by psychiatric patients in health care staff [1][2][3]. It is a worldwide problem [2,3]. The most common assailants were patients with schizophrenia and substance abuse and the most common staff victims have been nursing personnel with sequelae that included medical injury, depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), lost productivity, and impaired morale.Since 2017, there have been five review articles that have focused on select aspects of this staff victim literature. These reviews are based on 71,262 patient assaults on staff. The first review was an international study of psychological trauma experienced by forensic nurses from 2000 to 2019 [4]. Sixteen studies of 18,602 abuse incidents documented psychological distress with formal psychological support being offered in only 298 incidents. A second review article also focused on the presence of psychological trauma as sequelae to psychiatric patient assaults among psychiatric nurses from 1980 to 2019 [5]. Nineteen