Tabari Biomedical Student Research Journal

Background & Objectives: Violence at clinical environments commonly affects
nursing students. Exposure to violence may have a negative impact on the interest
and performance of nurses. This study aimed to determine the level of violence
exposure among nursing students during internship.
Materials and Methods: This descriptive study was conducted on 163 intern nursing
students of Nasibeh Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery in Sari, Iran in 2015.
Participants were selected randomly. Data were collected using questionnaires designed
by the researcher with Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.88. Data analysis
was performed in SPSS V.16 using descriptive and inferential statistics.
Results: In this study, 58.3% of the students were exposed to violence during internship,
including 23.9% verbal abuse, 6.7% non-verbal abuse, and 1.2% physical
assault. In addition, 19% of the violence came from patients, 22.1% was caused by
relatives of patients, 3.7% came from other nurses, 1.8% was caused by physicians,
1.8% came from hospital maintenance staff, 4.3% was caused by professors, and
6.7% of the abuse came from other hospital staff.
Conclusion: According to the results of this study, since nursing students are commonly
subjected to violence from patients and their relatives during internship,
scientific methods should be used to train these students on the prevention and
confrontation with abusive behaviors at clinical environments.