Assaults in the workplace. Do the police care?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I work in Scotland in an acute psychiatic admissions ward. It's a high pressure environment and often there are serious incidents on the ward including assaults on nursing/medical staff. It is however the hospital's policy to report such action's to the Police great you may say to yourself but it is amazing how the police just dont respond to us. I would bet my bile duct that if this happened to one of my general nursing friends in an A+E unit the police would attend as fast as there little cloven feet would carry them.What do you think?:(

Jay Levan

154 Posts

Yes, I agree to much "Allowable Violence" especially in "Psych" blame your Psychiatrists:( They are the ones that make the rules about violent patients, and police officers hands are virtually tied to those rules. The cards are stacked against hospital staff because a few bad apples have taken advantage of their positions in order to Abuse Patients. Which restricts the rest of the staff from protecting themselves, because they fear losing their job if someone interprets their defensive behavior, as offensive. Problem did not exist in 60's and 70's, then in 1980's pt Rights came to the forfront, since that time more and more restrictions of what you can do to protect yourself, have been implemented to the point of NOT protecting the worker under any circumstance :chair:

fedupnurse

790 Posts

It is highly frowned upon by the suits here if you call the cops if you are assaulted, doesn't matter what unit. They'd rather have their staff beaten half to death than GOD FORBID have negative publicity! This is the primary reason why I think hospital administrators should have to be in the main lobby of the hospital in a glass enclosed office space so all the world can see them and go in and let them have it for their decisions.

I am not a huge fan of cops, particularly after a few of them went out of their way to be nasty to us when we were on strike. It was just unnecessary. We were in a bad spot to begin with and then to have them giving us the finger and allowing hospital security to harass us...

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