AU: Assaults on nurses spark call for guards

By Grant McArthur, Herald Sun

One nurse a week is assaulted so badly in Victoria’s hospitals they are forced to spend weeks off work recovering from their injuries, while many more continue to work in fear.

In the last 4 1/2 years, 214 nurses and two doctors have been so severely attacked they have racked up almost $4.5 million in WorkCover payments while they recover from their injuries.

But the recorded assaults may be just the tip of the iceberg with WorkSafe estimating many attacks are never reported, while even its official figures do not include many more injuries suffered while fleeing aggressive patients or where victims are off work rehabilitating for less than 10 days.

Nurse and doctor unions are demanding the State Government crack down on hospital violence as alcohol and drug-fuelled patients boost the number of attacks in emergency departments.

WorkSafe acting executive director for health and safety Stan Krpan said nurses have been identified by the Australian Institute of Criminology as the group most at risk of violence in the workplace.

“Incidents can occur for a variety of reasons – including people who are in distress, afraid, ill or incarcerated, people who are affected by drugs, or people who have unreasonable expectations of what an organisation or worker can provide them,” Mr Krpan said.

In February a regional Victorian hospital patient attacked a nurse with a knife, and Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said it was time the Government introduced harsher penalties for such assaults, just as they have done with attacks on emergency services workers.

She is also calling for hospital security guards across the state, saying there was a huge increase in the number of smaller attacks on staff requiring less than 10 days off work, which do not appear in the statistics.

“You’d like to think our nursing and midwifery staff in Victoria could go to work and do their job without the threat of violence or being attacked, but unfortunately that is not the case,” she said. “We see an increase in violent patients and their relatives in particular.

“Because people are in hospital there is an assumption they are unwell and not in control of their actions, but we don’t believe that.

“It is not just emergency departments, we have cases of midwives being attacked.”

In just three months last year, nine Melbourne hospitals recorded almost 2800 “code grey” alerts between them, where medical staff are confronted by aggressive or violent behaviour from a patient or visitor.

Figures released under Freedom of Information show that in the Royal Melbourne Hospital alone there were 1177 code greys between July 1 and September 30 last year, while there were another 26 “code blacks” called in the hospitals where staff felt threatened by a weapon.

“These latest figures are further evidence that under John Brumby a culture of violence is escalating to crisis point in Victoria,” Opposition health spokesman David Davis said.

“Violence is spilling from the streets into our hospitals.”

Australian Medical Association Victoria president Dr Harry Hemley said staff and resource shortfalls in emergency departments made it harder to deal with aggressive patients and hospitals needed to introduce more safe rooms.

“People who visit emergency departments can be at their worst – patients may be in a lot of pain and relatives may have received devastating news about a loved one. They may suffer from a mental illness or become emotional and unpredictable, particularly if they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol,” Dr Hemley said.

“Unfortunately some doctors see aggressive or threatening behaviour as part of the job.”