How safe are our hospitals?

Frontline health workers suffering daily assaults, old initiatives such as Hospital Watch rebranded — are our hospitals able to keep us secure when we’re at our most vulnerable? asks Sorcha Crowley

Keeping everybody safe in our often chaotic,  overcrowded hospitals is one of the biggest challenges facing the State today. Nurses and other healthcare professionals are assaulted daily. File picture

“If you put anybody under enough strain, they’re going to be agitated. The emergency department is not a calm environment, it’s the opposite,” says consultant psychiatrist Professor Anne Doherty.

“It’s noisy, there’s bright lights, if we have someone in the ED agitated then you need to think about how we’re going to keep everybody safe,” she tells the Irish Examiner.