Background:

Aggressions towards health workers are a growing problem of nowadays society that could lead to patologies in the psychic sphere.

Objective:

The goal of this review is to find out whether health-workers who have suffered aggressions from the citicenship end up developing any psycho-social impact or not.

Methods:

A review was performed on the documentation indexed in the bibliographic databases MEDLINE (through Pubmed), SCIELO (Scientific Electronis Library Online), Scopus, Web of science and LILACS (Literatura Latinoamericana y del Caribe en CC de la Salud). The equation search was realized by means of the using of the descriptors “Workplace violence”, “Aggression”, “Medical staff”, “Occupational stress”, “Psychosocial impact” and “Personnel burnout”. The only filter we used was “year of publication”, choosing those articles that were published after 2000.

Results:

57 references were retrieved at first, from these, 13 articles could be obtained after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. These articles talk about the relation between aggressions to health care workers and the possible psychosocial impact that could lead.

Conclusions:

Aggressions are a very prevalent phenomenon all over the world, in spite of that, there aren´t too many studies that try to link psychosocial effects with aggressions. That´s why we believe that more studies are needed. In addition, we need to promote prevention programs for health workers so as to decrease the incidence, as well as campaigns for the citizenship.