ArticleThe British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners2025
Violence and abuse towards general practice staff by patients and the public: a scoping review.
Article in The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- "We could do more": exploring violance prevention measures in German outpatient primary care - a qualitative study.BMC primary care · 2026Article
- Contacts with Patients in Croatian Family Medicine Practices-What Has Changed from 2019 to 2025?Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Violence and abuse towards general practice staff by patients and the public: a scoping review.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGeneral practice is the gatekeeper to secondary care in many countries. This unique role may expose general practice staff to violence and abuse by patients and the public, yet violence and abuse in secondary care receives more attention than that in general practice. Existing reviews on primary care do not distinguish the perpetrators of violence.
aimTo analyse the evidence on: (a) the extent, characteristics, and impact of violence and abuse by patients or the public towards general practice staff and (b) the practices relating to violence and abuse prevention and support in general practice at individual and organisational levels. DESIGN AND
settingThis scoping review followed the updated Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines.
methodSix bibliographic databases, Google, and Google Scholar were systematically searched. Deduplicated citations (
resultsFifty studies from 24 countries were included. Past-year rates for violence and abuse by patients and the public towards general practice staff ranged from 13.8% to 90.3% and career-long estimates were from 18.3% to 91.0%. Long waiting times and unmet patient demands were the most common reasons. It had an impact on staff mental health, turnover intention, and service capacity. No evaluated prevention or support interventions were reported.
conclusionViolence and abuse towards general practice staff is widespread, having an impact on both individuals and service delivery. However, interventions are underresearched.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.