Attack on NHS staff every 7 minutes

An estimated 75,000 medical staff - one every seven minutes - were the victims of drink and drug-fuelled assaults by patients last year.

Most of the attackers escaped scot-free, despite the proclaimed 'zero tolerance policy' of the government and NHS management.

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Nurses, who blame binge-drinking for the vast majority of attacks, say hospitals are becoming dangerous and 'traumatic' places to work.

The violence costs the NHS more than £ 100million a year, including money for security, training, time off for injured staff and legal costs, BBC TV's Panorama programme will reveal tonight. That could pay for another 4,500 nurses or 800,000 paramedic call-outs.

Yet despite the scale of the problem, there is a staggeringly low conviction rate. Of the 58,700 physical assaults on NHS staff in England alone last year, only 850 led to a prosecution, the programme says.

Jane Davies, director of service delivery at the Royal College of Nursing said violence against staff was now 'endemic' in the NHS.

She said: 'We hear terrible stories of nurses being punched and kicked or threatened with weapons. Hospitals are becoming very dangerous and traumatic places to work.

'No matter where you go in the world, even in war zones, nurses will still be working - but we don't believe they should be put in that position in a British hospital.'

A recent RCN survey found that four out of five accident and emergency nurses had suffered harrassment or assault in the previous year.

Mrs Davies said the violence was a reflection of the lack of respect in society. She said: 'People used to have respect for nurses and doctors because they would recognise that these people were trying to look after them. But now it's different.'

The binge drinking culture had made things worse, Mrs Davies said. 'The number of people drinking at great volume is beyond anything we've ever seen. It's happening all week now - not just at weekends.'

She said official figures might even understate the problem because nurses did not always report incidents they faced 'day in, day out'.

The Panorama programme focuses on two of the country's busiest hospitals, Birmingham Heartlands and Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. One nurse reveals how she was left with permanent nerve damage after a patient attacked her with a syringe - but the authorities decided not to prosecute after a two and a half year struggle to take the case to court.

The programme will show footage of a doctor being attacked by a 55-year-old woman, a gang fight in an X-ray unit and a man biting another patient before trying to assault members of staff.

One nurse tells how a patient threatened to stub a cigarette out in her eye. Another was hit by a man with a plaster cast while a third was bitten and slapped.

One of the worst cases is that of convicted rapist Donald Gibson, who has served a jail term for assaulting a nurse and racially abusing a hospital security guard.

The jobless 37-year-old has to be escorted in and out of a private room at the Edinburgh hospital for life- saving kidney dialysis three times a week. Only six of the 37 dialysis nurses are prepared to treat him after he threatened to kill another member of staff. The extra security costs the NHS £40,000 a year.

Panorama's total of 75,000 attacks is based on official figures from England and Northern Ireland plus estimates from Scotland and Wales, which collate figures differently.

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley said last night: 'We have argued in parliament for stronger legal protection of NHS employees. In particular, for violence towards them to be punished more severely.'

A spokesman for the public service union Unison said: 'Anyone who attacks a police officer knows they will have the book thrown at them. We would like the same treatment for health workers.'

The NHS Security Management Service said: 'We are determined to tackle the problem, including measures that can prevent violence, such as conflict resolution training for front-line staff.'