Italian doctors protest against spike in patient violence against hospital staff

ROME, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) — Medical staff in the southern Italian region of Apulia staged a protest on Monday over increasing violence by patients’ relatives against doctors and nurses.
Several hundred professionals took part in a sit-in in front of the Policlinico hospital in Foggia, after at least three aggressive acts were reported at the facility in the past 10 days. The demonstration had the full support from Italy’s largest medical union Anaao-Assomed and the National Federation of Doctors.
“We are no longer willing to work in unsafe environments, and under psychological conditions that do not ensure adequate care to our patients,” Anaao-Assomed’s national secretary Pierino Di Silverio said.
Medical professionals, who are already overworked and low-paid compared to the European average, are no longer willing to “turn the other cheek” to violence, Di Silverio added.
“If answers are not forthcoming, we are going to call a mobilization, which will be followed by abstention from work in manners and at times we deem most appropriate,” Di Silverio said.
Violence against doctors, nurses, and public health staff in general is not new in Italy, but it has dramatically increased in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2023, over 16,000 attacks — including acts of physical and verbal abuse — were committed against some 18,000 public health workers across Italy (except for Sicily, which did not provide data), according to the Health Ministry.
In the past few days, one of the most serious aggressions saw dozens of people attacking the staff of Foggia Policlinico and vandalizing the facility. In a video circulating on social media, doctors and nurses were seen barricading themselves in a room to escape the group of attackers, the enraged relatives and friends of a 23-year-old woman who had died during surgery.
A similar episode involved some 40 relatives of a cancer patient attacking staff at a hospital in Pescara, in the Abruzzo region.
Last week, Health Minister Orazio Schillaci said he was discussing possible counter-measures with the justice minister. One possible solution, he said, could be to allow for the deferred arrest of aggressors caught in ‘flagrante delicto’ (catching someone at the moment they commit the crime) up to 48 hours after the attack.
Other proposals included banning people who assault medical staff from accessing the free hospital treatment offered by the national health system for up to three years, with this idea being supported by some of the doctors’ unions.
On Monday, the head of the National Federation of Doctors, Filippo Anelli, also called for extra measures “such as video surveillance systems, metal detector checks at the entrance, the presence of security guards, and permanent police stations.” ■