Systematic Violence Monitoring to Reduce Underreporting and to Better Inform Workplace Violence Prevention Among Health Care Workers: Before-and-After Prospective Study.

Background: Monitoring workplace violence (WPV) against health care workers (HCWs) through incident reporting is crucial to drive prevention, but the actual implementation is spotty and experiences underreporting.

Objective: This study aims to introduce a systematic WPV surveillance in 2 public referral hospitals in Italy and assess underreporting, WPV annual rates, and attributes "before" (2016-2020) and "after" its implementation (November 2021 to 2022).

Methods: During 2016-2020, incident reporting was based on procedures and data collection forms that were neither standardized between hospitals nor specific for aggressions.