OPINION: No-one should have to endure attacks in their workplace

Now imagine that nearly one in six of your colleagues has been attacked physically or verbally while trying to get their job done.

This is the sickening reality for staff at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham. More than 600 people, or 15 per cent of the hospital’s workers have been victims of such attacks over the past year.

It’s a cruel irony that many of these people will be working in a hospital because they wanted to care for others – and this is how they are repaid by society at large.

As if NHS workers didn’t already face enough pressures and come under-fire from every other direction.

But when you hear about the treatment staff have had to endure – being punched in the face by a drunk for example, or having vile abuse hurled at them because the member of the public has had to wait – it is beyond the pale.

None of us want to have to wait if we are in pain or discomfort, but is lashing out at those who are there to help you really going to help the situation?

Withdrawing treatment from persistent offenders is clearly a last resort, and it may only be moving the problem to a new location, but this kind of behaviour should not be tolerated. and as their security management specialist says, it is a difficult balancing act. It’s all rather noble of staff to shrug it off and say ‘it’s all part of the job’, but it really shouldn’t be.

Perhaps it speaks to a greater underlying problem in our society about respecting others and the unwarranted sense of entitlement so many seem to have.

But what it comes down to is fairly simple: no-one deserves to be abused verbally or physically for trying to do their job.