Attacks on health workers costing millions

[AB Asks]

Violent and abusive patients cost the NHS more than �100m each year, with more than 75,000 staff being attacked last year alone. Disturbing footage by the Panorama programme has shown how bad the problem has become, with its images of a woman assaulting a hospital worker. The researchers discovered the cost was equivalent to the salaries of 4,500 nurses or more than 800,000 paramedic call-outs. Do you think that hospital staff should be given more rights to protect them from abusive patients?

[Booldawg]

A nurse that had been attacjed was interviewed on the radio and said that the NHS hardly ever prosecute because alot of the attacks are by patients with mental health problems - fairly untouchable by the law. Also the blame had been put upon binge drinking and drug abuse. Until we shackle these lunatics to the wall like in the old days of bedlam then unfortunately our already pushed to the limits health workers are at risk. Put it this way - you'd shoot a mad dog.

[CushtyFred]

Good point BOOLDAWG! We should set up the NES (National Execution Service and get rid of these crazed cahnts right away!

[Lonnie]

its an indicment of the type of society we've become, makes me sometimes ashamed to be British.

Its no good just giving protection although in the present climate it is needed.

It would still be within the law to use the Pillories and Stocks.

Bring them back I say, espcially the Pillories.

[naomi24]

It's shameful. What an appalling society we live in and what a thankless task those people have. Everything possible should be done to protect them.

[Oneeyedvic]

Booldawg & CushtyFred are you seriously suggesting that mental health patients are to be treated like mad dogs - I sincerely hope that I am misinterpreting you.

[Booldawg]

If they are given to random attacks with no provocation, putting the very people in danger who are there to help us then yes. Mad is mad regardless of whether you are a dog, person or lesser spotted lemur. If they are not given to rational thought then are they going to be that bothered about manacled to the wall?

[BradPlantpot]

When it comes to unruly mental patients, we should just be tying them upto a firmly fixed rotary washing line, give them plastic spades and just let them dig & play in the sun all day. They're good people at heart so there's no need to bust their chops.

[Joff'en'tug]

Anyone big enough to throw a punch should be big enough to take one.....eye for an eye n all that!!!

[sp1814]

Booldawg

That loud thump you just heard was my jaw hitting the floor.

[Booldawg]

Whys that SP1814? Do you work in a hospital and a 'care in the community' case has just lamped you across the chin with an ornamental umbrella for no apparent reason?

[CushtyFred]

sp1814 got striped right up as patient in cubical 6 didn't like his cold beans on toast.

[Booldawg]

*runs into ward wielding a severed leg salvaged from the surgical waste bin* 'C'mon then Cushty Fred, do you dare take on the Mightly Megalithic Monster Munch? I will smite thee with ye sword of justice!'

[ludwig]

I'm with BradPlantpot on this one.

[sp1814]

Whether or not the umbrella in question is ornamental, I still think that the way we treat the most vulnerable in society defines who we are.

Also, if nurses or other care workers are attacked, then they should be free to sue their health authorities for injuries sustained.

That way, their management will be forced to ensure their staff have security backup (like in my local out patients).

Incidentally - in all my years, I've never, ever heard of an 'ornamental umbrella'.

[Booldawg]

Maybe I've spotted a niche in market with the ornamental unbrellas. So suing it the answer? Surely this will ulitmately lead on to less money being available for healh-care. These attacks are so quick and sporadic that by the time security is on the scene the damage has been done.

Health staff being attacked by people who should clearly be under lock and key, not just for their own safety but for society at large is only the tip of the iceberg. Often enough we hear about people being attacked and even killed by mental health patients who have been assessed as 'safe' and let out to roam free.

When it comes down to describing as who is deemed 'vulnerable' in this current situation its the health staff who are 'vulnerable' to attack.

[Oneeyedvic]

"Often enough we hear about people being attacked and even killed by mental health patients who have been assessed as 'safe' and let out to roam free."

From the Royal college of Psychiatrics: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/campaigns/changingmin ds/whatisstigma/violence.aspx
Violence can be a feature of mental illness and every year in England and Wales, on average, 55 people are killed by persons who are judged to be mentally ill at the time of the homicide. It is a devastating tragedy for that individual and his/her family when a life is prematurely cut short, and government, the media and the public should be concerned to minimise the number of such tragedies. However, every year 3500 people are killed on the roads and although there is some concern, the response is feeble compared to the size of the problem."

Trust that you are happy with the thought that anyone who speeds or has something wrong with their car is executed immeadiately - after all you are 70 times more likely to be killed by a dangerous motorist than a 'mental' patient.

[Vanilla Face]

Booldawg you do go on don't you?

[Vanilla Face]

People with severe mental health problems do not remember much at all about their actions once treatment has started kicking in and return to some form of normality. I think it is unfair to treat them like animals because they are very ill people who need help, not be punished because of it. On the otherhand, having been around and have seen with my own eyes how violent they can be, I agree that the hospital staff do need more protection than what they are currently receiving.

[alijangra]

In all honesty, health care workers understand when it is a person with mental health problems. Its when its a person with no mental health problems just being nasty and abusive that its very difficult. I was physically attacked pretty badly by a young lad who lied about his heroin addiction and consequently his morphine pump had no painkilling effect until the dose was sorted by the anaesthetist (two hours of him screaming and shouting, throwing things, pulling out lines and bleeding all over us) it was extremely frightening.

[Booldawg]

a) I banded people on drink and drugs in the same catergory as lunatics in my first post. b) Yes, speeding drivers kill alot more people each year than mental health patients, buts thats not what this thread is about. And c) yes I do go on - is reminding me of that a valid angle of argument?