Last update:
11-Mar-2026

OBJECTIVE To investigate the perceptions of health professionals in primary health care structures, regarding the type of violence they have suffered, the way it was expressed, and the impact of the violent incident as perceived and described by the victim.

METHOD A convenience sample was collected from 163 health professionals from ten health centers of the Second Regional Health Administration of Pireus and Aegean. The survey was conducted from September 2023 to February 2024. The "Assessment and Analysis of Workplace Violence in a Greek Tertiary Hospital" scale was used. An electronic platform was created using Google Forms, where the questionnaires were completed, while data analysis was carried out with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS) software program, version 26.0.

RESULTS The majority of employees (85.9%) were confronted with incidents of violence by patients or their companions in their workplace. Among all those who had experienced incidents of violence, only 13.6% reported feeling quite safe in their workplace, with no respondents stating that they felt completely safe, while 92.1% perceived their work environment as vulnerable to incidents of violence.

CONCLUSIONS The phenomenon of violence exists in the primary care workplace. To create a safe working environment, the implementation of an effective incident reporting system and the adoption of zero-tolerance policies for workplace violence are required.

Key words: Emotional impacts, Perpetrator profile, Primary health care, Violence, Work performance.