One in four National Health Service staff say that they have been harassed or abused by patients or their relatives in the last year, according to the Healthcare Commission’s second national NHS staff survey. From hte May print magazine.
Described as the largest workforce survey in the world, more than 217,000 NHS staff from 572 organisations in England took part. The survey finds little change since 2003 in violence and harassment reported by staff. Some 27 per cent of staff have been harassed, bullied or abused at work in the past 12 months by patients or their relatives; this rises to 37pc if bullying and harassment from colleagues is included. Some 14 per cent of respondents had been physically attacked by patients or their relatives in the past year, and a further one per cent of staff reported experiencing violence from colleagues.
The NHS Counter Fraud and Security Management directorate, which is seeking to train healthcare staff in managing conflict, has stressed the need for NHS good practice, to act on violence against staff – such as nationally agreed recording methods, and legal action, after a reported incident. Otherwise, the danger is that violence will be under-reported, because staff feel nothing would come from reporting an incident. The survey suggests that the CFSMS message has yet to get through fully to the front line. The survey said: “Although 83pc of all staff said they would know how to report such incidents, of the staff that said that they had experienced physical violence, only 68pc had reported it; and of the staff that said that they had experienced harassment, bullying or abuse, only 52pc had reported it. All staff were asked about whether they felt their employers took effective action after such incidents. Between 45pc and 54pc of staff felt effective action would be taken, although substantial proportions of staff did not know how their employer would react.”
A new survey question on whistle-blowing found that 78pc of staff reported that they would know how to report any concerns they had about negligence or wrong doing by staff in their organisation. And 59pc reported that there was a confidential whistle-blowing system in place.
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