Abstract:

The aim of this study was to evaluate the situation of violence events for health employee in the printed press before and during the pandemic in Turkey. For the study, the news in the four most circulated newspapers in Turkey were retrospectively examined for the period 18/02/2019-31/03/2021. The keywords "physician, doctor, nurse, health employee, filiation and violence, assault, beating, harassment, injury, insult, discussion" were used in the scans, and the news items reached were eliminated because they did not contain violence event, did not apply to health employee, and were repetitive news items. As a result of the eliminations, a total of 138 news (before the pandemic=51 and during the pandemic=87) were found, which were evaluated with content analysis. The work results show that the group most exposed to violence during the pandemic is other health employee, that the perpetrators are mostly patients, followed by patients' relatives, and that physical violence often occurs, that the cause of the violence was verbal discussions and warnings about the pandemic, that an investigation was initiated as a result of the violence, but that there were publications and an increase in news about violence against health employee in every region of Turkey.