Some incidents were fuelled by drink and drugs, while others appeared to stem from a loss of respect for the public sector, or frustration about waiting times, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a general kind of downturn in respect for public sector and uniform workers, that\u2019s an issue,\u201d he said, suggesting that a \u201cgeneral kind of frustration\u201d about the state of the health service sometimes overspilled into aggression.<\/p>\n
While waiting times have improved in recent years, he said frustration remains a feature.<\/p>\n
And he warned that staff were increasingly suffering sexual assaults while out on jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe violence and aggression piece is a big problem for us, but it\u2019s also got quite a nasty element to it for our people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you start to unpick the data, what we\u2019re seeing is a growing trend of sexual assault against clinicians from patients and\/or bystanders,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ambulance workers now face record levels of violence, with 22,536 incidents of abuse and assault reported across UK ambulance services last year, separate national figures show.<\/p>\n
The attacks, including punching, kicking, spitting and sexual assault, are the highest ever recorded and have risen by almost 15 per cent in a year.<\/p>\n
London\u2019s data for last year showed 54 per cent of front-line staff had been physically attacked while on duty and 47 per cent had been sexually harassed.<\/p>\n
Of staff who reported being sexually harassed by patients or service users, 63 per cent were female. In addition, 68 per cent of 999 call handlers and 47 per cent of 111 health advisers had been harassed, threatened or verbally abused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some incidents were fuelled by drink and drugs, while others appeared to stem from a loss of respect…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[20784,1757,134,554,229962,555,111,43,139,229961,69,221015,1177],"class_list":["post-555681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-alcohol","tag-drugs","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-health-emergency","tag-mentalhealth","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nhs-national-health-service","tag-nz","tag-paramedics","tag-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}