{"id":370469,"date":"2026-01-15T02:05:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T02:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370469\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T02:05:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T02:05:17","slug":"ni-health-more-than-72000-attacks-on-staff-in-five-years-appalling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370469\/","title":{"rendered":"NI health: More than 72,000 attacks on staff in five years &#8216;appalling&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The figures state there were about 60,000 physical attacks on staff and more than 12,000 incidents of verbal abuse recorded in the past five years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Of the 72,000 attacks, about 21,000 happened in the Belfast Health Trust alone, which was more than double the number of the second-highest, the Southern Trust.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The incident numbers only cover health trust staff, and do not include other settings like health centres, independent providers and private care homes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dodds said the figures only showed reported incidents, and that the actual number could be much higher.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I suspect that there are many staff who think: &#8216;What can be done? What&#8217;s the point?&#8217;, and just get on with their job, and I think that is a terrible reflection on society,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a reflection on the state, particularly of our emergency departments, and we really need to do something about it.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The figures state there were about 60,000 physical attacks on staff and more than 12,000 incidents of verbal&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-370469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}