Victimization Of Health Professionals In Bucharest Service Relations And Social Work Relationships

Workplace violence in the health sector has become an international social problem since the end of the 20th century. This concern is much more recent in Romania; few data are still available. This research aims to assess the extent of the phenomenon in this national context. The analysis is based on 207 questionnaires collected from doctors, nurses and care assistants from different departments and establishments in Bucharest, with an overrepresentation of the emergency department of public hospitals for its crystallization of conflicts. This research shows the prevalence of professional experience of victimization in the health sector (more than one respondent in two claims to have suffered violence at least once in the past year). This experience is massively built in the service relationship; the conflicts of perspective that manifest themselves there are experienced as violence when they undermine the exercise of the profession, as it is designed by the professionals. The results also show the significant role of the organization and its functioning in the expression victim. The more the organization is perceived negatively, the more often the expression victim is frequent. The service relationship is thus more than the question of the interactions between professionals and users and makes sense in the specificities of the context, which is itself crossed by fundamental reforms. This background helps to understand the importance of workplace conflict, accounting for more than one in five victimizations. More broadly, role conflicts, even if they are not all denounced as violence, contribute to shaping a lived experience, weighing on the victim expression of health professionals.