Threats against health care workers on the rise

Saturday 12 October 2024

An increasing number of threatening incidents involving healthcare workers are occurring year-on-year.

Hundreds of incidents are logged each year spanning verbal and physical assaults at numerous health care settings across Guernsey and Alderney, with police being called to assist on multiple occasions.

A Freedom of Information request asked for details of incidents reported at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital and other health care service locations, and how many events were "escalated beyond internal procedures".

A response from Health and Social Care showed that by the end of September this year there have been 212 incidents reported - including 97 verbal and 115 physical assaults on staff. 

The total for the year to date puts 2024 almost on a par already with the total number of incidents reported during both 2023 and 2022, and above the total number of incidents reported during each of the previous three years.

A spokesperson for HSC said that the reported incidents have predominantly occurred within Adult Community Services, Mental Health, Children and Family Community Services, and Hospital Services (Wards, ED, ICU etc.) in Guernsey. The data also includes Alderney, Public Health settings, and St John Ambulance but the locations are not broken down further.

Of the total number of incidents reported fewer than one quarter involve abuse or violence towards a mental healthcare worker.

Of the total number of incidents, more have been reported to Guernsey Police already this year than during each of the previous five years.

Officers have been asked to attend to deal with incidents involving health care workers 23 times already this year while all other incidents have been managed by HSC under its own protocols. 

That includes using Policy G201 Prevention & Management of Violence & Aggression.

That Policy is currently under a working group review to "update and improve our policies and procedures," said the HSC spoksperson.

"This is in addition to a review of our training provision across the various service areas to ensure it is meeting the needs of the staff.

"HSC currently have a risk assessed approach to the levels of training available for staff. From a support perspective, HSC hold regular ‘Civility Saves Lives’ sessions for Health & Social Care colleagues that aims to raise awareness of the power of civility in the workplace. In addition, staff are offered resilience-based clinical supervision and debriefs following incidents."

All staff also have access to the States of Guernsey’s Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) which is a confidential workplace benefit program designed to provide confidential and professional assistance to employees who are dealing with personal or work-related problems that could affect their well-being and job performance.