510 Cork hospital staff injured by patients 

Calls for better security for medical staff to protect them from being injured by patients have been made, as a Cork union representative said that overcrowded hospitals mean patients are more likely to lash out at nursing staff.

According to data provided to The Echo by the HSE through the Freedom of Information Act, some 510 hospital staff were injured by patients in Cork hospitals between 2020 and summer 2024.

The HSE explained: 

“All injuries are not caused by direct physical assaults, and a proportion of staff injuries are a result of unintentional aggressive behaviour, which is linked to a patient’s condition.”

Liam Conway, Cork-based industrial relations officer with the INMO told The Echo: “There’s safety training to some degree for nurses and midwives as part of an undergrad or postgrad degree, but the reality is that, nationally, at least 11 nurses and midwives are assaulted at work every day.

“Lots of these go unreported, and we’re concerned by what we see as a real lack of progress in reducing these assaults.”

“The conditions our members work in, overcrowded and understaffed hospitals, can create a pressure cooker atmosphere which is very apparent in emergency departments,” Mr Conway said.

“Nurses and midwives interact most frequently with the public, so they can often bear the brunt of patient’s frustrations — but it is a systemic issue.

“Hospitals are not just places of care, they are also workplaces — that needs to be not forgotten by employers, they need to make sure their employees feel safe.

“There’s a growing concern among INMO membership that there are so many instances of assault, people know colleagues that have been assaulted, and we need to know what measures are being put in place to protect a largely female workforce.”

Mr Conway added: “Employers have a duty of care to create a safe, working environment, but we’ve seen again and again people working in overcrowded hospitals with a de facto recruitment ban [the Pay and Numbers Strategy] in place.

“We’ve seen many examples of this.

“An injury in the workplace has the potential to be life altering, it may lead to someone not returning to the workplace or returning to a different environment, with modified duties.

“If you create conditions where there is persistent overcrowding, that leads to frustration among patients and also staff, creating a very pressurised environment.

“To add further insult to injury, the de facto recruitment ban makes it almost impossible to recruit when vacancies arise, [and] it’s taking a significant period of time to fill those posts.”

Sinn Féin TD for Cork South Central, Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire, told The Echo: “We’ve long known that nurses, midwives, doctors, porters, and other frontline staff are working under massive pressure.

“But I think this is a very worrying insight into exactly the pressures they are under.

“No one should have to work under danger of assault or injury, and those who care for us when unwell shouldn’t face this.

“The situation is definitely not helped by overcrowded hospitals and overworked staff, and the highly pressurised atmosphere,” he added.

He called for hospitals to have adequate security measures, to ensure medical staff have adequate access to leave in the event of an injury, and that cover is ensured when this happens.

He added: “The effective ban on recruitment is holding this back and Government needs to revisit this urgently.

“Medical staff should be safe, and any assault on them is totally unacceptable — the scale of assault found is totally wrong.”