Introduction: Workplace violence (WPV) in the health care setting has become an important issue in recent years. Researches show that nurses encounter with the highest rate of violence in the workplace. Although numerous studies have been conducted in this area in Iran, however, there is no consensus that reflects the current status and future research needs. The aim of this study was to determine the status of workplace violence against Iranian nurses.

Materials and Methods: In a systematic review, all papers published during last decade (2004-2013) in both Persian and English language regarding WPV against Iranian nurses were included. Magiran, SID, IranMedex, IranDoc, PubMed, Science Direct, Ovid, Google Scholar, CINAHL databases were searched using the terms: Workplace Violence, Nurse, Iran. In addition to databases, national data were used. Also,"Data Extraction Form" which developed based on research aim, was used for data collection. From 31 related papers and research projects, 10 articles were excluded due to lack of inclusion criteria. Finally, 21  papers and research projects were included in this study.

Findings: 19 of 21 articles (90.5%) were from descriptive studies, only two of them (9.5%) were qualitative study and there was no intervention study. Eight of researches (38%) were conducted in Tehran, 10 of them (47.5%) using the “Workplace Violence in the Health Sector Questionnaire” developed by World Health Organization, 3 studies (14%) were conducted on nursing students and others were carried out on nurses. Nurses are exposed to significant rate of various types of workplace violence especially verbal violence. Also, five main concepts were derived from the literature review including: Characteristics of Workplace Violence, Characteristics of nurses and their reaction to violence, predisposing factors, preventive factors and reporting rate and reasons for under-reporting.

 Conclusion: Based on the results, prevalence of workplace violence against nurses is a serious problem. Preventive actions in order to control workplace violence is an essential requirement. Also, due to the lack of intervention studies, future research must move from descriptive to intervention studies in order to provide a guideline in clinical settings.