1. COMPARISON OF VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSIONS SUFFERED BY HEALTH PERSONNEL DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN ARGENTINA AND THE REST OF LATIN AMERICA.
- Author
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Garcia-Zamora, Sebastián, Iomini, Pablo A., Pulido, Laura, Miranda-Arboleda, Andrés F., Lopez-Santi, Pilar, Burgos, Lucrecia M., Perez, Gonzalo E., Priotti, Mauricio, García, Darío E., Antoniolli, Melisa, Musso, Gabriel, Zaidel, Ezequiel J., Sosa-Liprandi, Álvaro, Del-Sueldo, Mildren A., Lopez-Santi, Ricardo, Vazquez, Gustavo, and Baranchuk, Adrián
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VIOLENCE , *MEDICAL personnel , *COVID-19 pandemic , *MEDICAL care , *POISSON regression - Abstract
Objectives. To explore the frequency and impact of violence against healthcare workers in Argentina and to compare it with the rest of their Latin American peers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted by applying an electronic survey on Latin American medical and non-medical personnel who carried out health care tasks since March 2020. We used Poisson regression to estimate crude (PR) and adjusted (aPR) Prevalence Ratios with their respective 95% confidence intervals. Results. A total of 3544 participants from 19 countries answered the survey; 1992 (56.0%) resided in Argentina. Of these, 62.9% experienced at least one act of violence; 97.7% reported verbal violence and 11.8% physical violence. Of those who were assaulted, 41.5% experienced violence at least once a week. Health personnel from Argentina experienced violence more frequently than those from other countries (62.9% vs. 54.6%, p<0.001), and these events were more frequent and stressful (p<0.05). In addition, Argentinean health personnel reported having considered changing their healthcare tasks and/or desired to leave their profession more frequently (p<0.001). In the Poisson regression, we found that participants from Argentina had a higher prevalence of violence than health workers from the region (14.6%; p<0.001). Conclusions. There was a high prevalence of violence against health personnel in Argentina during the COVID-19 pandemic. These events had a strong negative impact on those who suffered them. Our data suggest that violence against health personnel may have been more frequent in Argentina than in other regions of the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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