Objective To explore the prevalence of work-related violence exposure and its association with posttraumatic stress symptoms among police officers.

Methods Totally 3 160 police officers were recruited with convenience sampling in 12 provinces and surveyed with The Impact of Event Scale-R (IES-R) and the Questionnaire of Work-Related Violence for Police Officers between September and December 2016.

Results Among the 2 958 respondents with eligible information, the proportions of reporting work-related violence exposure were 63.8% (n = 1 887) to verbal insult, 39.6% (1 171) to malicious complaint, 31.8% (941) to verbal or physical violence threat, and 26.0% (769) to unarmed physical attack, respectively. Of the respondents, 17.2% (509) were identified at a high risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. The total IES-R score of the respondents was positively correlated significantly with their work-related violence exposure to verbal insult (r = 0.38) , threat (r = 0.39), attack or injury (r = 0.37), and being afraid of injury in future (r = 0.41) (P < 0.01 for all) and the four work-related violence exposures were significant predictors of total IES-R score after adjusting for gender and years of working as a police officer, with the β values of 0.08, 0.23, 0.09, and 0.25 (all P < 0.001).

Conclusion The results of the study suggest that the detection rate of posttraumatic stress symptoms is high and work-related violence exposure could predict the incidence of posttraumatic stress symptoms among police officers in China.