Nurs Midwifery Stud. In Press(In Press):e29619. Published online 2016 June 12. doi: 10.17795/nmsjournal29619. Brief Report The Extent, Nature and Contributing Factors of Violence Against Iranian Emergency Medical Technicians Amin Soheili, 1 Aram Feizi, 2,* Alireza Rahmani, 3 Naser Parizad, 1 and Javad Sheykh-Kanlou 4 1 Student Research Committee, Department of Medical-Surgical Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, IR Iran 2 Department of Community Health Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, IR Iran 3 Department of Medical-Surgical Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, IR Iran 4 Emergency Operations Center, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, IR Iran * Corresponding author: Aram Feizi, Department of Community Health Nursing, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, IR Iran. Tel: +98-9144462770, Fax: +98-4432220531, E-mail: aramfeizi@yahoo.com Received 2015 May 27; Revised 2016 April 04; Accepted 2016 April 05. Abstract Background: Workplace Violence (WPV) is one of the most complex and dangerous occupational hazards faced by pre-hospital emergency medical technicians (EMTs). Objectives: This study aimed to assess the extent, nature and contributing factors of WPV against EMTs in Urmia, Iran. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 120 EMTs from April to October 2014. A questionnaire was used for collecting the data. Descriptive statistics were applied to the data. Results: Most of the participants (79%) experienced WPV during the past six months. Accident scene was the most important place of violence and the patients’ companions were the main perpetrators of violence. Overall, 76% of violence victims reported “lack of awareness of the EMTs’ duties” as the most important contributing factor for WPV. Conclusions: This study highlighted the high frequency of WPV against EMTs. Evidently, the health care systems’ officials would benefit from taking proper actions in this area, particularly by “staff and public education”. Keywords: Workplace Violence, Physical Violence, Verbal Violence, Emergency Medical Technicians 1. Background Workplace violence (WPV) is recognized as a major public health issue (1). Workplace violence is defined as any violent acts including physical assaults and threats di- rected toward staff members at work or on duty (2). Vio- lence in the healthcare system represents almost a quar- ter of all WPV and may affect more than 50% of health- care workers (3). Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) encounter their patients in the accident scenes. People present at the accident scene are emotionally upset and this may predispose EMTs to more violence (4, 5). A study in Sweden showed that 67% of ambulance per- sonnel had been subjected to physical violence and 80.3% were verbally abused, over a year (6). In the United States (US), 61% of pre-hospital emergence care providers were ex- posed to verbal violence and 25% experienced physical vio- lence (7). A study from Iran also reported that healthcare staffs are exposed to a large number of various types of WPV (8). Another study among Iranian healthcare profes- sionals reported that 74.7% were subjected to psychologi- cal violence (9). Although EMTs are at higher risk of WPV, the issue is largely ignored in Iran. Most studies on WPV against EMTs are performed in developed countries, and only a few studies on this issue are available from Iran (5, 10), which have recommended further investigations due to the effect of local factors and cultural issues. Therefore, due to the importance of the issue and its adverse and dev- astating effects on performance of pre-hospital EMTs, it is necessary to conduct studies about the frequency, severity and nature of violence against EMTs. 2. Objectives This study aimed to determine the extent, nature and contributing factors of violence against EMTs in Urmia, Iran. 3. Materials and Methods 3.1. Study Design and Participants This cross-sectional study was conducted on 120 EMTs that worked in ten urban and eight suburban emergency medical services (EMS) stations under the governance of Urmia University of Medical Sciences from April to October 2014. The study population included all full-time EMTs in Urmia. The inclusion criteria were: working in the EMS for Copyright © 2016, Kashan University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.