Paul Goulter: Nurses Organisation CEO on over 7000 reports of violence against healthcare staff being logged last year

The Nurses Organisation says violence in emergency departments will worsen if systemic issues aren't addressed. 

Figures released under the Official Information Act show more than 7,500 reports of violence against healthcare staff were logged last year, matching the year before, but up significantly on 2023. 

Just over 1000 reports came from emergency departments. 

Organisation Chief Executive Paul Goulter told Mike Hosking it comes down to understaffing and people waiting too long to get treated, and it often escalates from there. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
An amazing and sad insight this morning. I'm afraid to

(00:02):
tell you into the state of this country, we have
new data on the assaults against health work at seven thousand,
five hundred and eighty four of them last year. If
your glass half full, that's actually down a bit from
seventy six hundred, So seventy six hundred to seventy five hundred. Ed,
of course, is your hotzew in one thousand and ninety five,
which is up seventy four percent. Paul Guilt is the
chief executive of the New Zealand Nurses Association. He's with us.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Paul, morning to you, morning Mike Cay.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm well, thank you. I've got adjacent experience with us
relatively recently, and the behavior just generally in hospital is
these days. I mean, you should send everybody to a
hospital to have a look at what's going on because
it's disgusting.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Would you agree, it's really grim and the problem just
continues to get worse and worse, and it's not just
in the emergency departments as well as every other areas
of the hospital face that year.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
You're right, because in our experience, just walking down a
corridor is I don't think it's at times, it's not
too outrageous to say it's like a wall zone. The behavior,
the language, the violent language that goes on seemingly every
hour of every day, I can't believe. And I don't
know why no one's doing something about it.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, and this is the daily life of nurses and
other health workers, of course. And what they tell me
is that actually they become normalized to it and they
just accept it and they know that's not right, but
nothing seems to get done.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Problem problem, as far as I can work out, is
they have security guards there and they don't do a lot,
which is not necessarily to criticize them, because I'm assuming
they're not allowed to do a lot, and so it
just becomes a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, And it's it's systemic, Mike. And a lot of
it comes back to understaff and chronic understaffing. People waiting
too long an ed to get treated, They get upset,
their friends or family get upset, and it just escalates
from there. Even if they treated, often they're put into
corridors and stretches and corridors really unbecoming. And you can

(02:07):
sort of understand why that violence occurs.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
See the ed scenario the ed part of that I
get to don't accept it, but I get so, you know,
half of them are drugged up and all of that
sort of stuff. So that's where it gets a bit tense.
But the stuff I'm talking about is in wards where
people are just sitting in beds and families are visiting,
and nutjobs are wandering around threatening violence left right and center.
So if I'm running a hospital, why aren't I fixing that?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Well? I suspect it comes down to money. They just
don't have the capacity to do that. And I think
one of the other areas which is not mentioned in
these reports is mental health. That's where some shocking assaults
take place there in these chronic understaffing in those areas,
so that means that patients are often you know, have
to be put in secure units in order to avoid

(02:57):
the violence, and it just escalates from that point.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
There's no reason to believe these numbers. I mean, seven thousand,
six hundred down to seven thousand and five hundred, I
suppose is positive, but there's no reason to believe this
won't be always seven thousand plus.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
No, no, no, And serious underreporting goes on. Nurses just
don't have the time to report this stuff any longer,
so you know, I can say one assault is one
assault too many. But essentially these are really grim statistics
and there are some practices been put in place to help,
but ultimately we've got a situation where we cannot get

(03:34):
help to people in time. They get upset, they get angry,
and nurses face that. In fact, nurses face violent at
a rate high them pretty much any other occupation in
the New Land.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Is this a Western world thing or is there something
about us?

Speaker 2 (03:50):
I suspect it's common across the world. You know how
contacts overseas say the same thing. We may have peculiar
aspects of it. In New Zealand, there is a trend
to increase in violence, and when patients are under stress
and families are under stress, that's when it's going to
come out.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, okay, mate, appreciate it. I don't know what we
achieve out of that, apart from to press ourselves on
a Frinday, but it's bloody, it's unbelievable, believe me. Anyway.
Paul Golter, who's the nurse's Organization Health New Zealand, who
we rang and we thought they might be interested in
talking to us, aren't so good work, guys.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
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