HARD-PRESSED health bosses in the north west are having to spend '1.5m training staff to cope with violent and aggressive patients and their families.
The cash could pay for 100 nurses, 300 hip operations or an MRI scanner which helps diagnose brain, spine and joint disorders.
But over the past two years health chiefs have had to spend around '600,000 showing a third of frontline staff how to deal with conflicts - and all 96,000 must have completed the course by 2008/9. In Greater Manchester a doctor, nurse or paramedic is attacked every 90 minutes.
Last year there were 6,000 assaults on the region's health workers.
The Manchester Evening News is campaigning for tougher penalties for yobs who assault or threaten health workers. The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS trust - with hospitals in Bury, north Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale - has hired two "conflict resolution trainers".
The trust is now advertising for a replacement, mainly based at North Manchester General Hospital, who will be paid up to '30,000 a year to teach staff how to defuse situations.
Abhorrent
An NHS Security Management Service spokesman said: "By 2008 all existing frontline staff will have the skills and capability to better prevent and manage a potentially violent situation.
"There is no excuse for assaulting NHS staff. They are committed to saving lives - and to protecting the public. For anybody to assault them is completely abhorrent.
"In the long term, conflict resolution training will save the health service money.
"By equipping staff with the skills to defuse potentially-violent incidents, it is likely we will see a reduction in the levels of violence and fewer staff off-sick because of its effects." Trusts have adopted a zero-tolerance approach to attacks on staff in the face of a rising tide of violence.
An agreement between Greater Manchester NHS, Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service means that anyone who assaults or verbally abuses NHS staff at work will now be pursued through the courts.
Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS trust staff have classroom lessons in which they are taught to recognise potentially-dangerous situations and use the right body language and cultural awareness skills.
A trust spokesman said: "For patients and visitors coming into hospital can be a stressful time and people can be on edge.
"Making sure staff recognise this and have the right training to deal with it can defuse situations and prevent them from potentially escalating to violence."
In 1999, at North Manchester, nurse Debbie Shipley said she thought she was going to die when she was assaulted by a patient.
She received a black eye, a gouge to the left side of her neck and 30 cuts and abrasions to her head and shoulders after a patient rammed a plastic beaker into her face.
In June 2004 Michael Maguire, 62, of no fixed abode, was jailed for hitting nurse Lynn Spencer so hard at Hope Hospital, Salford, she lost part of a tooth filling
Is this a good use of NHS money? Have your say below.
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Start arming guards with a shoot to kill policy for all yobs and their families.
Very intelligent remark Colin. (NOT!) You obviously have the same mentality as the morons who want to harm nurses and people trying to ease pain and suffering. Thrown any bricks or abused your local fire service this week ? On a more sane and sensible line of thought... The door needs to be LOCKED firmly shut to everyone who uses A & E departments. And anyone who wants to get inside needs to show RESPECT before being allowed inside to accompany someone who is in need of medical care. Or call the cops and let them deal with it BEFORE the morons get inside to harm our respected nursing staff. Colin, RESPECT is a word you need to learn and understand. 2 ostriches with their head in the sand will always only eat sand.
I went to Casualty on a Friday night once with a mate who'd broken his ankle after slipping awkwardly on a wet floor. I've never seen more chaotic scenes in my life. Eye opening to say the least. Broken noses, black eyes, white shirts covered in blood, dozens of people unconscious and covered in their own sick. 99% of it was alcohol related. They'll do nothing about it because it remains a good taxable drug.
hmm, so the onus is put on the innocent workers to learn new skills, no finger pointed at the people who can't or won't behave themselves. if they got tough with the lowlifes they wouldn't have to spend all this money learning these new fangled skills, which in turn wouldn't be necessary if people could show respect. the tail wags the dog again! the people who make the rules have no idea what the lowlife are like. since when should working in an A & E dept be "front line" work? this money should be spent on healthcare, not frittered away like this. you can train for all the skills going, it won't prepare you for a confrontation with a yob family, believe me I've seen them in action.
It would be very easy for each hospital to have it's police officers. I'm not talking here about a couple of sworn in special constables drawn from the hospital staff but full time police officers. It would be quite easy to do and funding could be arranged by getting some of the senior hierarchy.
how about zero tolerance for public intoxication, police officers at the hospitals to arrest the scumballs,followed by aggressive prosicutions and court ordered re payment to the n.h.s. or possibly to the funding of the police officers who have to be hired. with the apparent volume of scumballs being dealt with, this could be quite lucrative.