Hospital safety - Security issue vital to our health service

BY any yardstick, the fact that nearly €18 million was spent last year providing security in the health service illustrates the scale of the problem facing staff at hospitals up and down the country.

A major study has found that those at the coal-face of the health service, particularly ambulance personnel and child care staff are subjected to high levels of violence in the course of their work.

Towards the end of last year, the situation had reached the point where Irish Hospital Consultants Association felt it was time to issued a warning that violence was on the increase in the country’s hospitals.

It comes as no surprise that the situation is aggravated by the level of overcrowding in hospitals, a scenario that continues to bedevil the system and which contributes in no small way to the mounting aggression and violence coming from frustrated patients.

Indeed, conditions at weekends, especially after the pubs close, can be so dire that accident and emergency wards have been compared to war zones.

At one stage, the country’s psychiatric nurses threatened to strike last year because the Government had failed to introduce a compensation scheme for nurses who were assaulted at work. The strike threat was only lifted after the intervention by the Labour Relations Commission.

Nor is the problem of violence a recent phenomenon. For example, according to the Health Service Executive (HSE), a study at Kerry General Hospital in Tralee found that violence there had almost doubled inside a year, with reported incidents, including actual assaults, threats of assault and verbal abuse, rising from 73 in 2004 to 135 in 2005.

While patients are the predominant source of aggression towards hospital workers, relatives have on occasion also displayed violence towards staff. Thankfully, major injuries are rare. Nonetheless, the fact that less serious incidents of work related violence, particularly verbal aggression, tend to go unreported, means that managers in the health service can be unaware of the magnitude and intensity of the problems being encountered by staff.

While nurses and doctors rank among the most dedicated staff in the health service, the victims of violence could be forgiven for being absent from work. However, the knock-on cost to the system can be substantial and that is a major cause of concern.

With millions of euro being spent on heightening security and safety levels in hospitals and other institutions, it is important to recognise the emotional impact which related violence can have on the unwitting victims of physical assault or verbal abuse.

The need for security is vital in accident and emergency clinics where, despite repeated promises, the twin crises of over-crowding and under-staffing have not been resolved.