Nursing students’ experiences of workplace violence in clinical practice: a qualitative systematic review protocol

Objective: The objective of this review is to investigate the experience of workplace violence against nursing students on clinical placement. Introduction: Workplace violence affects nursing students during clinical placements in hospitals and other health care settings. Nursing students are uniquely vulnerable to workplace violence due to their limited experience and skills in challenging abusive behavior. Up to half of nursing students have reported experiencing horizontal or lateral physical or verbal violence during clinical placement, both from colleagues and patients. As a result of workplace violence, many students consider leaving nursing practice within their first year. This has implications for individual students' progression and for health care systems that rely on nursing graduates to deliver health care services. Inclusion criteria: Only qualitative primary studies will be included. The population is registered nurse students, the phenomenon of interest is the experience of workplace violence, and the context is clinical placement. Methods: A comprehensive database search of MEDLINE, CINAHL, Web of Science Core collection, Scopus, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, ERIC, ProQuest Central, ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses will be conducted. Databases will be searched from inception to present for English-language qualitative literature of any study design that meets the inclusion criteria. A search of unpublished and gray literature will also be conducted. The JBI critical appraisal checklist for qualitative research will be used to assess the studies. Findings and illustrations will be extracted and assigned a level of credibility. Meta-aggregation of findings will be performed, and a ConQual Summary of Findings will be presented. Systematic review registration number: PROSPERO CRD42022337674.