Violence in the workplace
Workplace violence generally refers to acts or threats of physical violence, harassment, intimidation or other threatening behaviour that occurs at the worksite, whether the perpetrator is a client, patient, student, customer, co-worker or family member. IWH research focuses on the prevention of workplace violence at both the workplace and systems (policy) levels.
Journal article
Journal article
Factors contributing to increased workplace violence against nurses during COVID-19 in the healthcare settings of a lower middle-income country: a qualitative study
Published: Asian Nursing Research, April 2024
Journal article
Journal article
Increased workplace bullying against nurses during COVID-19: a health and safety issue
Published: Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, June 2022
Journal article
Journal article
Workplace violence prevention: flagging practices and challenges in hospitals
Published: Workplace Health & Safety, March 2022
Journal article
Journal article
A realist review of violence prevention education in healthcare
Published: Healthcare, January 2021
At Work article
Understanding challenges in hospitals’ workplace violence reporting systems
How consistently and reliably are hospital violence incidents reported in Ontario? An IWH research team surveyed workers at six hospitals in the province in 2017. Despite mandatory reporting, the results showed great variation in reporting patterns.
Published: August 2020
IWH in the media
Understanding challenges in hospitals' workplace violence reporting systems
To address workplace violence, we need to understand the size of the problem. That requires having reporting systems that collect reliable and valid indicators of of workplace events, consistently over time and across workplaces. This is not easy, writes IWH's Dr. Peter Smith, drawing on two studies about reporting patterns and challenges at Ontario's hospitals.
Published: Contact, April 2020
Journal article
Journal article
Time to return to work following workplace violence among direct healthcare and social workers
Published: Occupational and Environmental Medicine, March 2020
IWH in the media
Workplace violence solutions for schools central to recent ETFO symposium
Participants from across Canada came together to discuss the most urgent health and safety concern facing education workers today—growing violence and harassment in schools. At the symposium, IWH Scientific Co-Director & Senior Scientist Dr. Peter Smith spoke of data showing the rise in workplace violence in Ontario is mainly experienced by women in the education sector.
Published: Workers Health & Safety Centre, February 2020
IWH Speaker Series
IWH Speaker Series
Supporting hospital staff to manage aggressive patient behaviour: A randomized controlled trial
As in many other hospitals, staff at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital were experiencing high rates of workplace violence. In response, a multidisciplinary team developed a program to standardize practices for identifying and managing patients with aggressive behaviour. Given the dearth of evaluation studies on this type of workplace intervention, the team also set up a randomized controlled study on the program's effectiveness. They share results in this IWH Speaker Series presentation.
Published: November 2019
IWH in the media
As teachers report more violent incidents in schools, boards struggle
In school boards across Canada, more educators say they’re being hurt on the job, according to data reviewed by The Globe and Mail. But there are gaps in data collection, and debates over the reasons for the rise in reports of violence, writes Carolyn Alphonso, citing IWH Senior Scientist Dr. Peter Smith.
Published: The Globe and Mail, September 2019