Measures for incident reporting of patient violence and aggression towards healthcare providers: A systematic review

• Sixty-two articles met inclusion criteria for examination in systematic review.
• The majority of the studies were cross-sectional, utilizing researcher developed tools and measures, lacking testing of reliability and validity of the instrumentation.
• Studies which did include discussions of validity and reliability of measures tended to focus on the larger themes of workplace violence, and less on theme of incident reporting.
• Articles which offer psychometrics regarding reliable and valid instrumentation lacked a specific focus on incident reporting.
• Review confirms the use of well-studied measures for recording instances of patient abuse or violence remains insufficient. The collection of data on patient violence towards health care workers is flawed by the lack of standardized measures of patient violence and standardized workplace reporting schemes.

Patient violence and aggression towards healthcare providers is a significant health and public affairs problem receiving international attention. Such violence is found to occur regardless of healthcare setting or provider discipline. However, most of the evidence of a high frequency of incidents perpetrated against providers is anecdotal and solid data on the prevalence of these incidents is not yet available. Studies have shown that accurate incident reporting remains one of the primary impediments to creating organizational policies and procedures to ensure the safety of the clinical direct care healthcare provider. Yet there is no clear evidence base currently existing to suggest what measures are of most utility in remedying this underreporting. This article contributes to the literature by conducting a systematic review of existing instruments designed to measure and report incidents of patient violence against health care workers. It is hoped that this review of existing measures will stimulate health care agencies to employ routine provider reporting mechanisms in order to increase provider reporting, improve the data on patient violence and consequentially work towards combatting this public affairs problem.