Pro-security culture desperate

Finally, members of the watching public have been exposed to the shocking reality of the abuse suffered by healthcare professionals, so too the lack of action taken by the authorities in its immediate aftermath.

Some hospitals operate a Yellow and Red Card system whereupon the management can effectively ban any individual from site (excluding, of course, medical emergencies). It’s nigh on impossible to keep track of people who drift from one department to another, use aliases or ignore the instructions they’re given.

This is where the police must take a harder line with regard to attendance in the event of violence and aggression, and in respect of collating evidence post-incident. For its part, the Crown Prosecution Service must enact tougher penalties for those who perpetrate crime. We have somehow arrived at a situation where it’s almost expected that medical professionals have to suffer verbal and physical assault as part of their working day, which of course is a totally unacceptable state of affairs.

What can be done, though? Can new laws be passed to make the penalties for convicted miscreants that much tougher? The simple truth is that Incident Forms are not being completed on a regular enough basis by the victims of verbal and/or physical assaults. They adopt the attitude of: “What’s the point? Nothing ever happens to the attackers anyway.”

Actually, it does. The NHS Security Management Service (‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’, SMT, August 2006, pp24-26) has issued guidance and advice to all NHS staff. Every NHS Trust hospital boasts a Local Security Management Specialist (LSMS) put in place specifically to manage security. All staff are privy to conflict resolution training. The comments made in the programme on this particular issue by senior consultant Tony Bleetman of the Heartlands Hospital were quite ridiculous and ill-founded.

Hospital security management teams are now bringing in specialist, contracted security companies offering licensed, trained officers who specialise in dealing with scenarios involving either violence or aggression. This is already having a positive effect as the fear of physical or verbal abuse is reduced due to the officers’ proactive, persistent presence.

For an illustration of this new-found positivity look no further than a conversation I had with a nurse shortly after Panorama had finished. I mentioned that, if staff were more efficient with the completion of Incident Forms, it would provide the given Trust’s managers with the evidence they’d need to take further action and continue to actively combat violence and aggression in hospitals. The response was simple. “I’ve been completing Incident Forms for the past four years, and what have they done about them?!”

A fair point from the nurse’s perspective, but I know of hospitals where much positive progress has been made. At one particular hospital, the introduction of a LSMS at the Nurse’s Hospital as a contact point for staff with issues concerning violence and aggression has been a huge help.

In addition, a contracted, award-winning specialist Security Team has been in place at the same establishment since 2004, offering protection on the ‘shop floor’ courtesy of well-trained and trusted security personnel. All members of staff there are being provided with conflict resolution training, soon to be followed by breakaway training.

The hospital in question now boasts 44 cameras monitoring internal and external areas. A Violent Incident Team (which supports the Security Team) is in place. This is the direct result of a voluntary scheme wherein members of staff are given conflict resolution, breakaway and control and restraint training (in line with the security staff’s training). These staff members then attend violent incident calls along with the security staff, therefore potentially providing a team of five trained to deal with violence and aggression.

On top of that, there has been the extensive introduction of panic alarms for staff in vulnerable areas as well as increased access control to prevent potentially violent and aggressive people from entering staff areas.

I would never suggest for one minute that it’s any member of staff’s fault that these assaults are occurring. Far from it, in fact. What I would suggest needs to happen is that some ownership of the problem is accepted by staff who might otherwise state: “It’s not my job or my problem.”

The NHS is such a massive, diverse and complicated organisation that control of any kind in any area is extremely difficult. That said, we must be able to control the perpetrators of violence and aggression such that we can prevent shocking and terrible assaults from occurring on a repeated basis.

Edward Jones, Site Security Manager, Securitas Security Services, Torbay Hospital