Ms Sylvia Chambers:

Good morning. I am qualified 18 years and I have never experienced aggression like we have in the past few years. On a daily basis there are numerous incidents where we are verbally attacked. I have been spat at, verbally abused and threatened that when I leave work that evening I will be stabbed as I get into my car. I have had grown men of 6 ft 4 in. towering over me or throwing objects at me. This happens on a daily basis. I do not feel safe going to work. My colleagues do not feel safe. This all comes down to security and overcrowding. The facility that parents are asked to wait in is not sufficient. At night time, from 2 a.m. onwards, we only have two doctors. Sometimes we could have up to 60 or 70 patients waiting at that time with two doctors. It is not feasible for two doctors to see all those patients. Parents become very aggressive and tired. The nurse, who is normally the first person they see, receives the backlash. It is just not appropriate. We cannot provide appropriate nursing care. Staff are leaving due to this because they are stressed. In the last 18 months we have had 30 nurses resign from our emergency department alone. We are on our knees when it comes to staffing levels. We have 24 overnight patients with two nurses providing care. If a nurse is verbally abused by a parent and has to provide repeated care episodes to that parent, it is extremely nerve-wracking. It is just not appropriate. We are at our wits' end. People are leaving because of this. Something has to be done. With the volume and acuity we experience in the emergency department, we are overwhelmed.

Parents cannot receive appointments with their GPs and that might have something to do with it. Numerous parents have said they would have had to wait a week for a GP appointment and therefore they are having phone consultations and then coming in extremely worried. That adds to their distress and in turn results in assaults and verbal attacks on nursing staff. I can only speak for the nursing staff I represent as I am the INMO representative in the emergency department. I have asked during exit interviews why people are leaving and it is because they are stressed and afraid in work and they cannot provide the appropriate care. We just want to go in and do our jobs. That is all we want. We do not mind being busy. We do not mind the acuity or the volume. In the emergency department a resuscitation, emergency or trauma might present and you have to provide care to those first. The people in the waiting area are waiting up to ten or 12 hours and they then become very aggressive. What do we do with this?