The risk of violence at the workplace to which medical personnel are exposed, is among the highest in Israel. According to the Health Ministry’s data, 2,528 incidents of violence towards healthcare personnel were registered in 2010. 66% of the violent incidents (1,666 incidents) occurred in hospitals, while 34% (862 incidents) occurred in medical institutions within the community. The patients constituted 51% of the assaulters of medical personnel, while visitors and escorts constituted 49%. 23.1% of the assaults were directed at nurses, 13.4% at doctors, 55.8% were directed at hospital security personnel, 1.9% of the instances were aimed at administration and housekeeping employees, and 5.8% were against other hospital personnel. The highest incidence of violence takes place in Israel’s emergency rooms, where 27.5% of the assaults occur. Similarly, 16.1% of the assaults take place in the hospitals’ internal medicine wards. It should be noted that the data may actually be higher since some incidents go unreported.

Research indicates a clear link between violence perpetrated against medical personnel and conditions in the hospitals and clinics. For example, research conducted in the emergency rooms showed that one of the main reasons for assaults on medical personnel was the prolonged waiting time, and the patients’ dissatisfaction with the treatment they received ¹ Under such circumstances, the doctor is perceived as the healthcare system’s agent, and held responsible for all of its shortcomings. Thus, an ironic process evolves in which the doctors become scapegoats and objects of violence due to the shortage from which they are the first to suffer, and due to the grave state of the system in which they work.

The medical personnel experience severe repercussions from the violence. Studies show that doctors and other workers that fall prey to assault generally suffer from guilt, anger, fear, dejection, disappointment, and post-trauma syndromes. The violence they experienced also affects their professional functioning, and among the victims of violence there tends to be a higher incidence of errors in professional decision-making (including misdiagnosis or administration of unnecessary treatment to patients), lower output at work, lowered morale, burnout, intentional avoidance of providing service in areas considered designated for violence, and a higher incidence of absence from the hospital or clinic.²

¹ S. Landau, Violence against Medical Personnel and Others in Hospital Emergency Rooms in Israel – Research Report, the Jewish University in Jerusalem, December 2004.

² R. Gross, Violence towards Medical Personnel and its effects: A Survey of the Research Literature and a Description of Current Research, the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institution and the Bar Ilan University.