The Doctors Union – ASMOF NSW welcomes the NSW Government’s commitment to recruit 129 additional full-time security staff across 27 hospitals, while warning that more guards alone will not fix the underlying conditions that drive violence against health workers.
The announcement follows the alleged assault of a nurse and a doctor by a patient at Concord Hospital on Tuesday. ASMOF NSW extends its full support to the injured staff and to the colleagues who cared for them. No one should go to work in a hospital and come home injured.
Research commissioned by SafeWork NSW identified staff shortages, long waits, access block and overcrowding as factors that contribute to workplace violence in NSW hospitals.
Health workers have a fundamental right to be safe at work, and protecting them means acting before violence occurs. The risk of violence rises sharply when patients in acute distress wait hours in crowded emergency departments for a medical assessment or for a bed to become available. Security staff can help manage incidents when they occur. Preventing them means getting patients the right care sooner, with enough doctors, including psychiatrists, rostered to provide it.
As NSW Health finalises its new statewide violence prevention policy, ASMOF NSW is calling for every hospital to assess and address risks linked to staffing levels and skill mix, workload and fatigue, access block and overcrowding, and how long patients wait and how delays are explained to patients.
ASMOF NSW President Dr Nicholas Spooner said frontline clinicians do not control
administrative resource allocation.
“Doctors and nurses don’t set the rosters, the beds or the budgets. NSW Health does,
and under the law, keeping staff safe is its job,” Dr Spooner said.
While acknowledging that doctors appreciate added protective measures, Dr Spooner stressed that structural failures remain unaddressed.
“Our members welcome every extra security officer. But a guard at the door doesn’t shorten an eight-hour wait for a mental health bed. If the Government is serious about preventing violence in our hospitals, it has to staff them properly,” he said.
ASMOF will keep pushing for these changes through the NSW Health Safety Taskforce
and as the policy is being finalised.
-END-
About us:
ASMOF NSW – The Doctors Union is the industrial and professional organisation representing salaried doctors across New South Wales. As a branch of the national trade union, ASMOF NSW is committed to safeguarding the rights of doctors by promoting their broader interests, providing representation before industrial tribunals, supporting workplace negotiations and advocating for a robust public health system.
Contact details:
Luis Comissi | 0434 405 594 | [email protected]
