Community Members’ View about Violence against Health Workers: A Qualitative Study

Violence toward health care workers is a global health problem, usually associated with decreased job satisfaction and poor patient care outcomes, with serious consequences for patients. Its extent is difficult to measure due to under-reporting.

The objective of this study was to explore the opinion of some influential community members about violence against health workers, with respect to its types, reasons, mechanisms in place, and suggestions to de-escalate it.

A qualitative in-depth study was conducted with 10 key informants, including people working in judicial premises, police and military services, teachers, municipality members, and religious leaders. Discussions were conducted through direct face-to-face interviews, using a semi-structured interview guide with open-ended questions.

Almost all interviewees agreed that the main reasons for violence were general security instability across the country, poor quality of health services, weakness of laws and regulations for punishing perpetrators, irresponsible behaviours of some doctors, and the unexplained negative role of media toward doctors.

Workplace violence is a common, frequently occurring practice in most health care facilities in Iraq, probably attributed to the long-suffering of wars and conflicts. Shortage of staff and equipment is the basis for this malpractice.

This publication relates to R2HC funded study; Reducing violence against health care in DRC and Iraq via citizen science and de-escalation trainings