Dr Laura Joyce: Christchurch Hospital ED specialist on alcohol related incidents towards hospital staff

Alcohol affected patients are wreaking havoc on emergency departments, a recent Trans-Tasman study finds.

Almost every staff member who took part in the survey has been abused by a drunk patient.

97% experienced verbal aggression, while 92% experienced physical aggression.

Christchurch Hospital ED specialist and co-author of the study talks to Ryan Bridge about the staggering reports, if the situation is getting worse, and how severely the statistics are affecting entry into the industry.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Almost everyone working in emergency departments has been abused by
drunk people. This is according to a new trans Tasman study.
A staggering ninety seven percent experience verbal aggression, ninety two
percent physical aggression, and nearly ninety percent fail unsafe. Doctor
Laura Joyce is a specialist at Christ Church ed In
the hospital.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
There.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
She co authored the study. She's with me now, Hello, Hello,
thank you for talking to me today. Have you Can
you just give us an example of when you've been
abused in the hospital.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I have many examples. It's not an infrequent occurrence. So
patients will come in intoxicated with injuries, and we have
to deal with them when they're not being the in
their right mind to be the nicest people. We have
relatives who are intoxicated and we're trying to look after
their elderly loved ones or their children, and they're interfering

(00:52):
in the care of their loved ones because they are intoxicated.
And so this actually affects every person who comes from
ad not just the patience and not just the staff,
but everyone who is in the department at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
And how often are people actually throwing punctures, you know,
getting hit.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
We try to avoid that. So we have a number
of de escalation strategies we can use, and we would
hope that we would never need to use those. There
is a lot of verbal aggression occurring. We are very
lucky in christ You at GD that we have security
staff twenty four seven who can help to de escalate
but also protect us in the case of violence.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Is there a part of you, and I know you
have an oath, but is there a part of you
that just goes if these people are coming in here
abusing me, they don't deserve my care.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
I think everyone deserves our care, but we don't deserve
to be treated like this. I don't know any other
industry we're having ninety eight percent of your staff abused
would be considered acceptable. But it just seems to be
par for the course in healthcare and it's not right.
And we know that people will leave the health system,
they'll leave New Zealand and there'll be no one less

(02:03):
to careful patients.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
What do you do about it? I mean you can
only security. You can't security up the WASO. I mean
that becomes impractical and too expensive. So what can you do?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
No, we need to stop the problem. Right where it's occurring.
We need to stop alcohol related harm. So alcohol is
cheap and available and you can get it at three
o'clock in the morning from your local alcohol shop. That
might be beside a kiddy, it might be beside a school,
it might be where vulnerable patients live. We need to
restrict the supply of alcohol to reduce the harm that

(02:33):
it's causing.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
If I mean, I've heard this before from from emergency
department doctors. If we don't sell alcohol, I mean, people
will find if people want to get high off something,
they'll get high off something, won't they They will.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
But the problem is cheap alcohol. So we need minimum
unit pricing because if you are buying a ten dollars
a bottle of wine, you're going to drink more bottles,
aren't you, no matter what your financial resources. We need
to increase in minimum unit price on alcohol so that
that cheap, you know, low quality alcohol is not available
to people to do harm for themselves in ads.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, okay, interesting, Laura, thank you for that, doctor Laura Joyce.
They study co author specialists in the christ Church Hospital.
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