The effect of violence against healthcare professionals on the career plans of intern doctors

H. Murat Girginer, Sanem Nemmezi Karaca, Yeltekin Demirel

Keywords: Career plans, healtcare professionals, intern doctors, violence

Background:
In our country, violence against healthcare workers increases day by day.

Research questions:
1. What is the effect of violence against healthcare professionals on intern doctors' career plans?
2. Do violence against health workers affect the specialization choices of trainee doctors? If so, in which direction does the effect occur?

Method:
This study was conducted at a 47-year-old Medical School in Sivas, eastern of Turkey. The questionnaire prepared by the researchers was completed to 178 intern doctors about to graduate, with the face-to-face interview technique, by the same researcher. Doctors who left the form half-way were excluded from the study. The survey was consisted of 38 questions, evaluating sociodemographic data, specialization choices, desired workplaces, whether there was a alteration in these areas throughtout the medical school education, and the impact of violence against healthworker on this process. Data uploaded to SPSS 23:00 and descriptive statistics were used. Significance level was accepted as p<0.05.

Results:
Our study is continuing and datas of 91 trainees are presented in this congress. The mean age of participants was 25±1.8 (min-max:23-32), 57.1% (n:52) were men, and 96.7% have been thinking violence increased. During their educational life, 73.6% had witnessed violence, and 36.3% had been subjected to it themselves. It was indicated by 62.6% of students that violence against someone familiar will affect their choice of specialty. There were only 13 (14.3%) interns who were not concerned about violence after graduation.
Among trainee, it have been thought that the most likely to be exposed to violence was in emergency service (78.7%), obstetrics-gynecology clinics (40%), general surgery (34.7%) and cardiovascular surgery clinics (26.7%), respectively. It was also followed by surgical branches. Besides, 61.3% (46/75) of interns stated that they could have planned careers for these branches if there were no violent incidents.

Conclusions:
TheNumbers of Emergency/Surgical specialist could be indanger of declining.

Points for discussion: