Mistreatment of Providers by Patients in Emergency Medicine

Background: •Mistreatment and disrespect of healthcare providers including verbal harassment, sexual harassment, and physical harassment is relatively commonplace in the clinical setting. •Per Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare professionals are at a 16x greater risk of violence than professionals in other service fields1. •Much of this mistreatment is from colleagues and superiors2, but a significant portion is from patients and their families with prior studies showing anywhere from 6-67% percent of the mistreatment done by patients or their families2,4,5,6. •Providers may feel that being mistreated is an expected part of the job7,8. •Many resources have been dedicated to understanding and decreasing mistreatment amongst colleagues9. •Studies suggest that mistreatment from patients and their families may be potentially more prevalent than mistreatment from coworkers in the emergency department (ED) setting4,10. •The objective of this study was to quantify better understand the types of mistreatment directed towards providers and to determine whether or not it was especially prevalent in the ED setting