How a hospital is helping NHS staff realise they need not accept violence, abuse and aggression on the job
H
ugo (not his real name), an advanced clinical practitioner, was on the night shift in A&E at Great Western hospital, Swindon, when a drunk patient started swearing aggressively at a nurse. “When I asked if I could help, he told me, ‘Fuck off you gay cunt.’ When I asked him not to speak to me like that and to return to his seat in the waiting room, he just walked up the corridor swearing and repeatedly shouting ‘gaydar’.”
Hugo said he was initially more annoyed than scared, even when the patient grabbed a crutch and started swinging it about. “There wasn’t time to be frightened,” he said. “You’re just trying to protect your colleagues and the patients.” He called security and in the end the police had to arrest the patient. He said although he had experienced aggressive and violent behaviour – over the course of his career, he has been kicked, spat at, pushed and intimidated – “it’s still upsetting and psychologically exhausting to deal with.”
Now GWH hopes a renewed campaign to tackle violence and abuse will help staff such as Hugo realise that violence, abuse and aggression do not need to be part of the job. GWH first introduced a strategy to combat abuse in 2016. But executives decided the hospital needed to revive it after 2024 NHS staff survey results showed too few workers said they would report violent or abusive incidents. While a quarter of staff said they had experienced harassment, bullying or abuse from patients and the public, barely half said they would report it. And only two-thirds said they would report violence.
