{"id":961703,"date":"2026-11-12T10:48:38","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T10:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/961703\/"},"modified":"2026-11-12T10:48:38","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T10:48:38","slug":"nsw-hospital-security-boost-as-nurse-and-doctor-allegedly-assaulted-by-patient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/961703\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW hospital security boost as nurse and doctor allegedly assaulted by patient"},"content":{"rendered":"

A nurse and a doctor at Concord Hospital in Sydney’s inner west have been treated for injuries after allegedly being attacked by a patient.<\/p>\n

Police said a 44-year-old female patient was restrained and sedated, after allegedly assaulting the two women, aged 34 and 57, on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

Health Minister Ryan Park said both women required medical treatment, one for a broken wrist.<\/p>\n

The attack came a day before the NSW government announced a boost in security staff at 27 hospitals across the state.<\/p>\n

One hospital staff member, who had knowledge of the incident, said colleagues told them the woman shoved a nurse manager in the chest, causing her to fall backwards and sustain multiple wrist fractures.<\/p>\n

They said the second woman, a junior doctor, suffered a cut to her head after being pushed over and hitting the edge of a table.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Staff at Concord Hospital were injured. (ABC News: Liam Patrick)<\/p>\n

The staff member said assaults against hospital staff by acute mental health patients were an “almost daily” occurrence at Concord, and had created a “mutinous feeling” among some emergency department staff.<\/p>\n

In an email sent to staff, hospital management described it as a “serious incident” and said the staff members had been “injured by a mental health consumer”.<\/p>\n

The email said one of the staff members requires some time off work to recover from their injuries.<\/p>\n

Management said a “number of violence prevention initiatives” were in place at the hospital.<\/p>\n

“It is deeply disappointing that these measures were not yet able to protect our team,” the email read.<\/p>\n

Guard backs boost to security\"A<\/p>\n

Mr Rowling says he’s been injured at work many times.\u00a0 (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Bruce Rowling is a security guard at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital and says he has been injured on the job “many a time”.<\/p>\n

The worst of those injuries was his thumb pulled out of its socket, ripping his tendons.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Mr Rowling says his thumb was pulled out of its socket.\u00a0 (ABC News)<\/p>\n

He said he was restraining a male patient who had been told by a doctor he was moving to another hospital.<\/p>\n

“He didn’t like that, he just went a bit crazy, started swinging and punching the doctor,” Mr Rowling said.<\/p>\n

Before the patient could be sedated, Mr Rowling held him down.<\/p>\n

“In the process of me holding him, my thumb was pulled out of its socket,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Mr Rowling says usually four security staff worked in a hospital of hundreds. (ABC News: Nick Dole)<\/p>\n

Mr Rowling said in a big hospital with about 650 beds, there were usually four security staff working at a time.<\/p>\n

He said a general rule was one security guard for every 100 people, but that number was not achievable once visitors and hospital staff were taken into account.<\/p>\n

At a media conference with the health minister, he backed government plans to boost security staff at hospitals.<\/p>\n

The state government has committed to recruiting 129 extra full-time security staff to reduce gaps in security ratios in New South Wales hospitals.<\/p>\n

Bigger hospitals with high-volume emergency departments see the most violent incidents, including Westmead Hospital, Prince of Wales Hospital and Royal North Shore Hospital.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Extra security staff will be hired across 27 hospitals. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Mr Park said the additional security staff would be deployed at 27 hospitals across the state.<\/p>\n

“The ability for them to handle challenging patients, challenging visitors, challenging people who are coming into our hospitals is far easier when they feel supporter by additional staff,” he said.<\/p>\n

Health Services Union secretary Gerard Hayes said the additional staff would help prevent violent incidents before they happened.<\/p>\n

“We will now be in a position to prevent issues occurring as opposed to responding to them, which is the most important thing,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Hayes described a hospital as a “microcosm of the community”.<\/p>\n

“And we’re seeing the community now under pressure, we’re seeing the community also becoming more anxious,” he said.<\/p>\n

‘Drug of choice’ increasing violence<\/p>\n

Mr Park said changes in drug use had contributed to an increase in violence in emergency departments.<\/p>\n

“Back 20 years ago, the drug of choice, heroin at the time, had a different effect on the body than what the types of drugs that we see now, particularly methamphetamine,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Ryan Park says a nurse suffered a serious enough injury they required care. (ABC News: Nick Dole)<\/p>\n

Mr Park said people using methamphetamines presenting at hospitals could bring some “pretty frightening issues” for staff and security officers, requiring extra resources.<\/p>\n

“We’re working very closely with police about the way in which we interact with those patients when they come into our hospital settings,” he said.<\/p>\n

Calls for extra powers<\/p>\n

Mr Rowling said ongoing underworld crime in Sydney had also been a concern for hospital security.<\/p>\n

“They end up in hospital, you have their friends and relatives turning up and they don’t always like each other,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said when police do not have capacity to watch patients in hospital, security guards “take up that slack”.<\/p>\n

“Everything you see out on the street happens in hospitals as well, but you have a thousand people in a big building,” he said.<\/p>\n

While security guards receive training, they do not have any “extra powers than the average citizen”, Mr Rowling said.<\/p>\n

“We can ask someone to leave if they’re misbehaving problem is you can’t do that to everyone who’s a patient because they might be a critical patient,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Park said the government had “not made a decision” about increasing powers available to hospital security guards.<\/p>\n

“Additional powers comes with other challenges, but we are working through those,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A nurse and a doctor at Concord Hospital in Sydney’s inner west have been treated for injuries after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":961704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,126925,36506,529610,137,376350,500,19900,16862,43842,4206,670,116402,529611],"class_list":["post-961703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-concord-hospital","tag-emergency","tag-emergency-department-violence","tag-health","tag-health-services-union","tag-healthcare","tag-hospitals","tag-nsw-government","tag-nsw-health","tag-security","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-inner-west","tag-sydney-royal-north-shore-hospital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/961704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}