Health Secretary Alan Johnson announced a £97m plan to protect staff at the Labour Conference in Bournemouth.
The proposals include panic buttons to reassure lone nurses, particularly those working in psychiatric wards.
The Manchester Evening News's Protect Our Heroes campaign has been calling for more action to stop assaults on emergency workers including nurses.
Mr Johnson told Labour delegates that too many people working in hospitals suffered harassment, intimidation and violence.
He added: "The extra money will ensure we have better security in hospitals and it will also be used to improve the training we give to staff to deal with aggressive behaviour.
"It will also allow us to increase the number of prosecutions against those who assault staff. Anybody who abuses our staff must face tough action and the possibility of jail."
Mr Johnson also announced new powers, backed by fines, to crack down on hospitals who are not meeting hygiene standards. He said: "A new regulator with tougher powers will be able to inspect, investigate and intervene where hospitals are failing to meet hygiene standards - in NHS and private hospitals."
These proposals follow concerns by Gordon Brown about the spread of superbugs, such as MRSA, in hospitals and his promise to have a thorough clean up of wards as part of action to protect patients. Tweet
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We are having to spend 97 million to protect health workers - says a lot about British society.
Amuses me that there are still some ostriches who put posts on here denying that society has become more violent, selfish, intolerant, unpleasant etc etc. If things are no worse now than they were 50 years ago why are we spending the 97 million??
the government should spend some money giving us health workers a proper and proportionate pay increase!! its a joke compared to what people get in the private sector!
Attacks on NHS staff should carry mandatory 5 year jail sentences, in the kind of jail conditions which would have been found approx 120 years ago
After 10 years in power, and billions of extra funding, the government is now reduced to such sad NHS initiatives as thorough cleaning of hospital wards and measures to protect staff from attack. Hardly a great advert for the wonderful NHS we were promised.