'Catastrophic for careers': 35 Cork healthcare staff take leave after experiencing assaults on duty over two-year period

A total of 35 Cork healthcare staff took leave due to assaults on duty over the last two years, at a cost of nearly €390,000, new HSE figures have revealed.

According to data provided to The Echo by the HSE through the Freedom of Information Act, staff took 1,455 days off between March 2023 and March 2025 as a result of an assault while they were working — an average of 41.5 days each.

Professor Conor Deasy, the clinical director of emergency and acute care at CUH, said: “Sometimes an assault can lead to not being able to work; for example, they could have sustained a back injury, head injury, or a fractured limb.

“For emergency care frontline workers, these assaults can be catastrophic in terms of their career, not just because of the physical but also the psychological effect of being caught off guard — you’re not expecting that kind of reaction from someone you are trying to care for in general.

“It’s very intimidating for healthcare staff and can cause significant emotional and psychological challenges coming back into that sort of environment.”

“It’s a very stressful event if someone feels cornered by a patient, who might be behaving irrationally because of a medical reason or intoxication, but nonetheless, it’s very intimidating for healthcare staff and can cause significant emotional and psychological challenges coming back into that sort of environment.

“Some people might not be able to return to the work they once did and are trained to do”, he said, explaining that if someone is not able to come back to work, conversations could be had around alternative locations they could work in.

He added that CUH has security guards “but even with the best will in the world, these things happen in a flash”.

Prof Deasy added: “There’s a general concern around respect for frontline healthcare workers, we are increasingly finding patients presenting to EDs, sometimes with relatively trivial problems, becoming irate as they’ve endured a long wait due to being in a low triage category, and taking it out on healthcare workers.” 

CONCERN

Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) assistant director of industrial relations, Cork’s Colm Porter, said that assault at work was a worry for their members, and “it’s becoming more of a concern".

“The figures are not surprising - I would assume the majority of those 35 people work in hospitals, and at the moment hospitals are overcrowded, patients are waiting longer - all of this increases the likelihood of staff being assaulted.

“Our members are on the frontline, they’re often the ones that are receiving complaints from the public about having to wait long periods of time to be seen - the figures only cover serious physical incidents, but verbal abuse is a daily occurrence.” 

More staffing would help alleviate these issues, Mr Porter said, adding “equally, the HSE is an employer, and it needs to shift its focus when it comes to the safety of its employees.

“When we look at INMO membership, the majority of the members are women, they need to know that they can go about their jobs treating patients, they shouldn’t have to worry about their own safety.

“Of those 35 people who are off on serious physical assault leave, they may have had career-ending or career-changing incidents happen to them in the line of work.” A HSE spokesperson told The Echo: “Of the 22,764 HSE employees in the South West Region, there were 35 employees availed of the Serious Physical Assault Scheme. This equates to 0.15% of all HSE South West employees and an average of €11,000 per employee.

“HSE South West is committed to ensuring the safety of both staff and the people using our services, and to creating a safe working environment.

“Violence and aggression towards our staff is not tolerated. We encourage staff to report any such incident.”

The Echo previously reported that some 510 hospital staff were injured by patients in Cork hospitals between 2020 and summer 2024.