Global prevalence and factors associated with workplace violence against nursing students: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression

Abstract

Workplace violence encompasses physical violence, verbal abuse, sexual harassment, bullying, and threatening behaviors. Reviews indicate that it is widely prevalent among healthcare professionals, but there is a lack of well-designed reviews specifically focusing on nursing students. This review aimed to synthesize the global prevalence and factors associated with workplace violence against nursing students, and prevalence estimates based on the different types of violence and perpetrators. A three-step search strategy included studies since inception from six electronic databases. Studies meeting eligibility criteria were included. Meta-analyses, subgroup, and meta-regression analyses were used to synthesize pooled prevalence rates. Thirty studies involving 10,955 nursing students were included. This review revealed that 55.1 % of nursing students have encountered workplace violence. Nursing undergraduates exhibited a significantly higher prevalence rate compared to a mixed group of undergraduates with diverse nursing or student profiles. Verbal abuse (53.3 %) and bullying (43.6 %) emerged as the most widespread forms of workplace violence, with nurses (24.2 %) and patients (22.8 %) being the most frequent perpetrators. This study suggests that academic and healthcare organizations develop stringent policies to combat workplace violence against nursing students. Future research may also focus on workplace violence risk factors and their long-term impacts on nursing students.