NCT05419687

Violence Against Health Care Workers in Fragile Settings

Violence Against Health Care Workers: Understanding Context Through Citizen Science and Measuring a De-escalation Training Intervention Effectiveness in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 798 (actual)
• Sponsor: Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The general objective of the project is to assess whether a violence de-escalating training for health professionals and of a publicly displayed Code of Conduct (a set of rules developed through a citizen science and co-design approach) for both health professionals and clients at the level of the health facility, can reduce the incidence and severity of episodes of violence, and to identify the most cost-effective way to implement these interventions in rural Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and in the mega city of Baghdad, Iraq.

Detailed description

The study will adopt a stepped-wedge cluster-randomized intervention trial (SW-CRT) design to assess the two intervention components, a violence de-escalating training and the implementation of the code of conduct co-developed during the formative qualitative phase. The study will adopt a closed cohort with repeated measurements on the same participants (nurses in DRC and junior doctors in Baghdad) and will involve the unidirectional transition of each enrolled cluster (health facilities in DRC and secondary hospitals in Baghdad) from the control (no intervention) to the intervention sequence in a randomized sequential manner according to a predefined roll out process.

Conditions

• Workplace Violence

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Training in de-escalating violence	* Individual educational component through a de-escalating violence training for health care workers (verbal and non-verbal de-escalating techniques) * Refreshment training in the form of collaborative learning
BEHAVIORAL	Code of conduct delivered via a warning board	A publicly displayed code of conduct (a co-designed set of rules) for both HCWs and clients, delivered via a warning board at the level of the health facilities and secondary hospitals

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-11-01
• Primary completion: 2024-10-31
• Completion: 2024-10-31
• First posted: 2022-06-15
• Last updated: 2025-01-22

Locations

2 sites across 2 countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq