Emergency staff abused: Drunken abuse of emergency medical staff rife

NINE out of 10 emergency doctors and nurses have been assaulted or physically threatened by drunk patients in the past year, a damning new report has found.

Hospital violence - Dr Sandra Neate

NINE out of 10 emergency doctors and nurses have been assaulted or physically threatened by drunk patients in the past year, a damning new report has found.

Fearful medics say they are also abused hourly by alcohol-fuelled thugs in Victoria’s emergency departments, compromising the care and safety of other patients while dominating stretched resources.

A survey of more than 2000 Australian emergency department doctors and nurses has also revealed horror instances, including a physician knocked unconscious by a drunk wanting a sandwich; a heavily pregnant nurse threatened she would be punched in the stomach; and a heart attack victim too scared of fellow patients to ask for help.

The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine will today launch a campaign demanding action to better protect medical staff — exactly one year after the Herald Sun revealed serious assaults in Victorian hospitals requiring police attendance had jumped more than a third in a year.

ACEM president Dr Anthony Cross said Governments had to not only increase security in emergency departments, but also examine the availability of alcohol and the density and operating hours of booze areas such as King St.

“The magnitude of the problem is huge. When you are just trying to help people this is tragic — and it is completely preventable,” Dr Cross said. “We have a range of other patients in the departments including elderly ladies and children and it is tragic for them to have to witness this, while diverting resources away from caring for other patients when we have to look after wild, aggressive patients.”

Dr Cross said intervention programs to target patients while recovering in hospital were needed to prevent people repeating their behaviour.

The ACEM research, which was backed by the Federal Government, found 92 per cent of emergency doctors and nurses reported alcohol-related physical violence or abuse in the past year, while 98 per cent said they had received verbal abuse.

Nine out of 10 also said the care of other patients was negatively affected by drunk, aggressive patients and they felt unsafe by the threat of working in the presence of alcohol-affected patients.

After 18 years working in St Vincent’s Hospital’s emergency department, Dr Sandra Neate said aggression from drunken patients had become much worse in recent years and constant threats were wearing down staff. “I’ve had fingernails in my arm, people spit at me and I am frequently verbally abused — and it is that constant low-grade aggression and violence that has quite a profound effect,” Dr Neate said. “I think it would be very hard to recover from a very big attack, but It is the continuous exposure over years to that, which wears you down. It shouldn’t happen. I am still concerned for the patient and wishing they hadn’t drunk so much and ended up in a condition here they are at risk of harm, but Nobody likes looking after them because it is entirely preventable and entirely self-inflicted.”

On November 6 last year the Herald Sun revealed police calls to major hospitals or nearby medical centres climbed 35 per cent in 2012-13, while more than 7000 code grey alerts for aggressive and threatening behaviour were issued in 11 hospitals in the year.

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