Today, Kenny McNeil, a full-time convener for the Royal College of Nursing who represents Jersey nurses and midwives, said the figures were ‘concerning’ and added that the States Assembly might need to consider introducing legislation specifically to protect Health staff from the threat of assault.
In response, the Health Department said it was taking ‘strong action’ to combat the issue, including discussing the possibility of following the UK’s lead and making assault on an emergency worker a specific criminal offence.
It also plans to use CCTV and surveillance more and review out-of-hours access to certain areas to better protect patients and staff.
Mr McNeil made the comments after a freedom of information request made by this newspaper showed that there had been 191 incidents of harassment, violence or abuse carried out by a patient on member of hospital staff between 1 January 2016 and 31 March this year.
Of the 191 incidents, 34 led to staff calling the States police. Six of the assaults resulted in an arrest, with five leading to a conviction.
The figures also show that 154 of the incidents did not result in the police being called and a further three calls were made but not answered.
Mr McNeil said: ‘It is concerning to see the figures. It is completely unacceptable that Hospital staff can face this issue. People should be able to do their jobs without fear of intimidation or violence.’
He added that although there was a zero-tolerance policy to assaults against staff, he was ‘not sure it is followed’.
‘Scotland have introduced legislation where every incident is referred to the police,’ Mr McNeil said. ‘Is legislation a route to go down? If it is something that keeps increasing, we may have to ask the States to consider it.’
He added that the number of incidents reported to the police was also concerning, saying: ‘The question is why is it that [low]?’
A breakdown of the figures shows that during the 27-month period staff members were subjected to ‘physical abuse, assault or violence’ a total of 80 times and ‘disruptive aggressive behaviour/other’ 58 times and ‘verbal abuse or disruption’ 57 times.
Meanwhile, there were 11 incidents of racial abuse and staff were threatened with a weapon on five occasions.
There was also one incident of sexual abuse during the period.
Staff have also had items thrown at them six times, while there were nine incidents which were simply recorded as ‘other abuse’.
The figures come after the Jersey Nursing Association said earlier this month that ‘despondent and struggling’ members were considering industrial action in an ongoing dispute over pay, with some considering leaving the Island to work in the UK.
According to the response for data quality purposes, the data is reported three months in arrears to ‘allow sufficient time for incidents to be investigated and categorised’.
The number of assaults carried out by a patient on another patient was also released.
Between 1 January 2016 and 31 March 2018 a total of 13 such incidents were recorded – four in each of 2016 and 2017 and five in the first three months of this year.
