The prevalence of physical and verbal violence among emergency medicine physicians in military hospitals vs non-military hospitals, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: multi-center cross-sectional study.

INTRODUCTION: In healthcare settings, physical and verbal attacks are commonly encountered in the workplace among healthcare providers. Patients and patients' relatives and friends have been reported to be the perpetrators of workplace violence. Among all healthcare settings, emergency department (ED) have been designated as high-risk settings for violence, where more than one-quarter of emergency physicians reported that they were victims of physical assault. This study aimed to report the prevalence of workplace violence against emergency medicine physicians in military and non-military hospitals in Jeddah city. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional design has been used in this study. An electronic questionnaire was developed through the Google Form Platform and it included demographic data, the occurrence of verbal or physical violence in the workplace to participants, how many times they experienced this violence, the time of incidents, the location either inside or outside the hospital, whether the perpetrators were mostly patients, patient families, or friends, and whether they reported any violence or not. Categorical variables were used to describe frequencies and percentages, while descriptive statistics such as mean and 95% Confidence Interval (95% CI) were used to summarize the scale variables. P < 0.05 was considered for statistically significant differences. RESULTS: Among the 100 participants, 76 experienced either physical or verbal violence, or both. The remaining 24 did not experience any sort of violence. 83% of the physicians who have been physically violated were working in non-military hospitals. Of the 72 participants who had experienced verbal violence, 51 (70.8%) were working in a non-military hospital, while 21 (29.2%) were in a military hospital. The most common reason for not reporting was that the participants felt that reporting the violence incidence was useless. Moreover, 92% of participants chose "Train healthcare workers to deal with violent attacks" as a suggested helpful factor in decreasing the number of work-related violence. In addition, "Education of the public" and "Raising awareness of healthcare workers" were chosen as helpful factors as well by 91% and 90% of participants, respectively. CONCLUSION: This revealed that physicians in non-military hospitals experience higher levels of violence compared to their military counterparts. However, it is concerning that instances of violence are substantially under-reported across both military and non-military healthcare facilities.

Outcomes of Differentiated Thyroid Cancer in Children and Adolescents at King Abdulaziz Medical City, Jeddah.

Objective Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) is rare in the pediatric population, with most data from the Western world. We aimed to describe the clinical presentation, treatment intervention, histopathological characteristics, complications, follow-up, and response to treatment in 17 patients with DTC at or below the age of 20 years. Interventions This was a retrospective cohort study at King Abdulaziz Medical City, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. We included patients aged younger than 20 years with DTC. Total or near-total thyroidectomy was performed in 82% of the patients, central and/or lateral neck dissection in 35% of cases, and radioactive iodine (RAI) ablation in 76% of cases. Results The study included 17 patients (14 females), with a median age of 16 years at the time of diagnosis. Thyroid nodules were the main complaint in 88% of the patients. Thyroid ultrasonography was the main method for the initial evaluation. Papillary cancer was the most common type of tumor, and lymph node spread was found in 82% of the patients. Moreover, 40% of the patients exhibited excellent responses to therapy, with 35% showing indeterminate results. Only 23.5% of the patients developed hypocalcemia postoperatively. Conclusions Classical papillary thyroid carcinoma was the predominant histopathological type, and most patients showed excellent responses to therapy, followed by indeterminate in most of the cases. The most common presentation was a neck nodule, signifying the role of thorough physical neck examinations. Finally, recurrence occurred in a minority of patients. However, none of these patients died.