Assaults normalised for staff

St John staff are assaulted by intoxicated patients so frequently it has become normalised in the profession, a senior paramedic says, with as many as 10 staff hospitalised a month.

Manawatu¯’s St John territory manager Jeff Mabbit said Palmerston North St John staff are seeing a steady increase in alcohol related incidents in the city, particularly in town as party goers indulge in the city’s nightlife.

When some of these people overindulge, especially when they become aggressive, this can put a strain on all emergency services, Mabbit said.

Palmerston North City Council is currently debating if nightclubs should shut at 2am or stay open till 3am, following a series of drunken assaults in the CBD.

Mabbit said the situations staff enter can be dangerous when alcohol is involved. ‘‘A great deal of staff have been physically assaulted. For some it’s possibly only minor, but we’ve still been assaulted and that’s not OK.

‘‘Not everything will be reported because it’s just become a part of the job. Because alcohol forms a massive part of our job it’s just been normalised.’’

Staff have been spat on, threatened with weapons, and kicked, punched and bitten by patients, he said.

About 10 incidents a month are serious enough for ambulance officers to need hospitalisation and ongoing treatment.

Mabbit himself has been assaulted on multiple occasions

‘‘We don’t want to put our staff in danger, so we sit back to wait for police assistance, but that puts the [resource] strain back on them.

‘‘It can be simple intoxication incidents, and the problem with that is people’s friends abandon them, and they don’t have a way to get home. We have to take them to a place of safety and that’s that hospital, and it will have a flow-on effect. The hospital will have to deal with the same problems we have.’’

Mabbit said St John works closely with police to mitigate risk for their staff.

Manawatu¯’s prevention manager Inspector Ross Grantham said special rosters had been organised to deal with the violent alcohol-fuelled harm on the weekend.

He was concerned for the welfare of all emergency staff who enter booze-fuelled environments.

St John Manawatu¯ district operations manager Steve Yanko said each year ambulance officers are involved in or exposed to more than 2000 call-outs nationally where they are either verbally or physically abused. ‘‘Of these reported cases, approximately 200 are serious and involve physical aggression and violence,’’ Yanko said.