Security in hospitals must be paramount

IT’S a sad state of affairs that we have to ask the question: who is going to protect those who protect us? When we need treatment in our hospital A&ES, we take it for granted staff will be there to help us.

But for some people, they have become an easy target.

In the last five years a staggering 50,000 attacks on healthcare staff have been reported.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone would think it’s appropriate to target those who go out of their way on a daily basis to provide us with the medical care we need.

It’s not something society should tolerate.

Hospitals need to be a secure environment, where treatment can be delivered by doctors and nurses without fear.

They should not be looking over their shoulders concerned about where the next assault is coming from.

And while some may point to the widespread presence of CCTV, that does little to prevent the assaults.

It may record the incidents, but what is needed is intervention on the ground.

There remains no single approach to protecting health staff across our trusts.

The Northern Trust has a private security company for Antrim Area and Causeway Hospitals.

The Belfast Trust hires professional security personnel.

But in the Western Trust it remains the responsibility of hospital porters to intervene, with staff using an attack alarm system.

The Department of Health may have launched a new violence and aggression framework in December 2023, and is committed to ensuring the prevention, reduction and management of violence and aggression, but until the statistics start to show it is beginning to work, doctors, nurses, other workers and patients will continue to be at risk.

Unison’s Conor Mccarthy says it’s down to “pure luck” no one has been killed as a result of all those assaults over the past half decade.

He’s calling for “more boots on the ground” in the form of additional, trained security guards to protect staff and visitors.

Dr Tom Black, chair of the BMA’S Northern Ireland Council, said: “The threat of violence adds to the stress of doctors’ working lives and that of all other frontline healthcare workers.”

Given the issues over staffing and morale, attracting new doctors and nurses, and retaining the ones we already have, we should be taking all necessary steps to ensure their safety.

Employees wouldn’t tolerate the risks elsewhere — hospital staff should be no different.