In hospital emergency departments, pressures such as lengthy waits in A&E, ‘corridor care’ and chronic understaffing, are reasons behind violence in health care settings, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) suggests.
Nicola Ranger, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive, said: “Behind these shocking figures lies an ugly truth. Dedicated and hard-working nursing staff face rising violent attacks because of systemic failures that are no fault of their own. Every incident is unacceptable, but we need ministers and trust leaders to acknowledge some of the key underlying causes.”
At a Bristol hospital, incidents of violence against staff almost doubled between 2019 and 2024. The number of reported attacks increased from 83 to 152. At a hospital in Kent, incidents rose from 13 in 2019 to 89 in 2024.
A senior A&E nurse told the RCN that her hospital was a “tinder box” for violence. She said she has seen colleagues punched, kicked and had a gun pointed at them, and has herself been spat at by a patient and threatened with an acid attack. She developed depression and anxiety and has taken a secondment in research as a break from the profession.
“The violence I saw made me become more fearful outside work. I saw how volatile people can be,” she said.
A senior charge nurse said that things have got so bad in her hospital “even patients you would expect to be placid are becoming irate because of just how long they have to wait”. The RCN warned that failing to reduce violence in health care settings will see the Westminster government’s ten-year Health Plan fail. Nicola Ranger said: “Nursing staff not only go to work underpaid and undervalued but now face a rising tide of violence. It leads to both physical and mental scarring, lengthy time off and sometimes staff never returning. It’s unarguably true that you can’t fix the health service when vital staff are too scared to even go into work.
“The Government needs to do more than record the shocking levels of violence – it needs to reduce it. Measures to keep staff safe day-to-day are crucial, but the stark reality is that unless the government does something about lengthy waits, corridor care and understaffed nursing teams, more nursing staff will become victims of this utterly abhorrent behaviour.
“Left unaddressed, this could see plans to reform the NHS fail completely.”
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting has stated that he ‘will not stand any health worker being subjected to abuse’ and as featured in the June edition of Professional Security Magazine, takes ‘a zero-tolerance approach’. And Rebecca Smith, director of system and social partnership at NHS Employers, said that preventing and reducing violence is one of the areas to be included in the new set of standards for staff to be introduced by April 2026 as set out in the Ten-Year Health Plan.
We Refuse Abuse
Similarly, SUEZ which runs recycling services for councils, says that frustrations can arise during busy periods if queues are moving slowly or staff ask to see the contents of a black bag to ensure material that could be reused or recycled is not being disposed of incorrectly. But colleagues are simply doing their jobs. Hence the firm is running a ‘We Refuse Abuse’ campaign this month.
SUEZ recycling and recovery UK CEO, John Scanlon said: “Millions of people use recycling centres every year – the overwhelming majority of these visitors are wonderful and the main reason many of our colleagues enjoy their front-facing roles.
“However, a very small minority of aggressive individuals have caused members of our team enormous stress and upset and we want to ensure this upward trend in verbal and physical assaults does not continue.”
