Parents of sick children 'have threatened to stab nurses'

INMO general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha: 'Assaults on midwives escalated during the pandemic.'

Nurses have been spat at, had doors kicked in on them, and had threats they will be stabbed by patients and parents of sick children, the Oireachtas Health Committee heard on Wednesday.

Figures presented by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), indicate more than 10 nurses are assaulted every day with reports of 5,593 assaults between January 2021 and October of last year.

One children’s hospital lost 30 nurses from its emergency department recently, which a nurse said was primarily due to being afraid at work.

Sylvia Chambers, a clinical nurse manager in an Emergency Department in a large children’s hospital in Dublin, said: “I’m qualified 18 years and I can safely say I have never experienced aggression like we have in the past few years particularly.” 

She added: “I’ve been spat at, I’ve been verbally abused. I’ve been threatened that when I leave work that evening I will be stabbed as I get into my car. 

"I have grown men, 6ft 4, towering over me throwing objects at me on a daily basis. I do not feel safe going to work.” 

Ms Chambers said this is aggravated by overcrowding in the hospital with parents waiting up to 10 or 12 hours for help for their children.

“At night-time from 2am onwards, we only have two doctors. Sometimes we could have up to 60, 70 patients waiting at that time with two doctors, it’s not feasible,” she said.

“Parents become very aggressive, they become tired. 

Nurses are usually the first ones that they see, we receive the backlash.

As a senior nurse, Ms Chambers is often called to help other nurses when a potentially dangerous situation arises. 

She described having to leave seriously-ill children to do this.

“In the last 18 months we have had 30 nurses resign from our emergency department alone. We are on our knees when it comes to our staffing levels,” she said.

INMO general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha said assaults on midwives escalated during the pandemic, linked to frustration at restrictions placed on visiting hospitals.

“It can be partners, it can be visitors,” she said, explaining midwives were the visible face of the policy, even though they did not create these policies.

She pointed to the ironies of the Government supporting policies to prevent violence against women, yet the HSE workforce — which is 78% female — experiences violence daily.

Afraid to go to work

The committee also heard from doctors and other healthcare staff, including representatives of healthcare assistants and paramedics, who said people are afraid to go into work.

The Irish Medical Organisation’s Dr Laura Finnegan said assaults including gender-based and racist assaults are common, especially for younger doctors who work nights.

IMO president Dr Clive Kilgarden said many doctors do not report assaults as they feel nothing will come of it, and for this reason he believed the statistics were under-reported.

SIPTU health organiser Kevin Figgis said in many cases there were not enough security guards especially on large hospital sites. This can mean when an incident happens, the guards are at the other end of a large campus.

He also highlighted attacks on paramedics who are vulnerable when working outside of a hospital.

Calls were made by all unions also including FORSA and healthcare workers present for the HSE and hospital managers to react to this, and take action with calls also made for the Health Safety Authority to step-up investigations into assaults in health workplaces.