NHS staff face ‘shocking’ levels of violence
A committee of MPs has called for more action to protect NHS staff from violence, after discovering ‘shocking’ levels of violence towards staff.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is calling for more measures to protect staff and particularly for a better national system of mandatory reporting.
The Committee highlighted that the current system of reporting does not differentiate between the different types of incidence or the severity of the attack. The PAC points out that there is still a high level of under-reporting of violent episodes.
The MPs warned that these problems limit the Department of Health’s (DoH’s) understanding of the issues. The Committee claimed that it is difficult to say if any increases in violence towards staff are actual increases or to measure how well Trusts are combating the problems.
The PAC wants the next phase of the DoH’s zero tolerance campaign should focus on the reporting requirements which Trusts should apply.
In 2001-02 there were over 95,000 reported incidents with nurses and care workers being the most likely to suffer violence or aggression. Only security and protective service workers experience higher levels of violence.
Edward Leigh, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, commented, “It is shocking that nurses and other NHS staff, who care for others, should be subject to such high, and rising, levels of violence and aggression.”
The Committee reported that the impact on staff was immediate, in terms of injury and distress, and longer term with increases in stress, sickness absence, lower morale and productivity, and problems in retention and recruitment.
It also found that Trusts have developed a range of measures to deter patients and visitors from becoming violent or aggressive, but there are no evaluations of the effectiveness of these deterrents.
Trusts were praised by MPs for their relationships with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service but they said more could be done to improve response time and in pressing charges.
