Introduction:

Workplace violence is becoming increasingly frequent in the health sector. Therefore, valid and reliable instruments are required to measure this phenomenon.

Objective:

To validate the factor structure of the Spanish version of the "Workplace Violence in the Health Sector" questionnaire in Chilean prehospital care workers.

Material and methods:

Quantitative, multivariate study in which the main components of the Spanish version of the questionnaire were analyzed. After being reviewed by experts and conducting a pilot test, 6 questions were eliminated. The adapted version was administered to 74 health professionals (nurses-kinesiologists) and 148 paramedics working in prehospital care. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (chi-square test). The SPSS v15 software was used to perform data analysis and the principal component analysis (PCA).

Results:

The questionnaire had a high overall reliability (α=0.912). According to the PCA, three factors were identified, namely, physical violence (eigenvalue: 8.3), verbal abuse (eigenvalue: 3.7) and mobbing or workplace harassment (eigenvalue: 3.6), which explain 86% of the variance.

Conclusions:

The proposed instrument is valid for measuring workplace violence among health professionals working in prehospital care. Having a validated tool to quantify this phenomenon in the country is a significant contribution since it allows carrying out similar studies in other health areas and, based on the results, work on its prevention and the promotion of healthier work environments.

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