To illustrate different perspectives on staff factors and aggression in forensic psychiatry.

The study was conducted in a forensic psychiatric setting at Psychiatric Centre Sankt Hans. It utilizes data from the three year period between 2008 and 2010. Staff Observation Aggression Scale - Revised (SOAS-R) is used to examine aggressive incidents during the period mentioned.

Out of 244 employees in a three year period and based on 1507 incidents, 91.6 % have registered at least one aggressive incident. The primary target for aggression was the staff in 64.4 % of the incidents.

74.8 % of the staff were women and the majority of the staff were RN and nurse-aids. According to gender differences we found no significant differences in reported incidents (OR 1.27 p = 0.818). Regarding the severity score there were no significant gender differences (p = 0.41). The length of employment has no impact on the severity score (p = 0.269). We found a minor but significant negative correlation (r = -0.262 p = < 0.01) between length of employment and the number of reported aggressive incidents.

Our findings show that the staff is the primary target of aggression, and the majority of the staff is experiencing aggression as part of the job. We found no significant differences related to the gender of the staff, but we found that length of employment has an impact on the numbers of reported aggressive incidents, indicating underreporting and possibly cultural adaptation to some extent.