By Mark White, Home Affairs Correspondent
There are calls for drunks and others who commit offences on NHS premises to be dealt with more severely after a Sky News investigation found the police are being called about crimes every 10 minutes.
Figures show officers deal with more than 60,000 crimes in hospitals across the UK every year - and the number has risen in the last 12 months.
The number of offences is so high that several police forces, including Greater Manchester and Lancashire, have started basing liaison officers at some of the busier A&E departments.
The true scale of the problem is likely to be much higher as the figures only represent two-thirds of Britain's police forces and do not include the biggest, the Metropolitan Police.
A total of 30 forces responded to a Freedom of Information request from Sky News, which shows they attended 64,728 calls to hospitals and other NHS premises in 2013 - a rise of almost 1,700 on the previous year.
Greater Manchester Police attended 12,726 incidents on NHS premises last year - an increase of 320 on the year before.
Officers in another of the UK's larger forces, West Midlands, attended 7,132 calls to hospitals and other health premises in 2013 - up 249 on the 2012 figure.
Police chiefs are warning that those who threaten or assault NHS staff will be dealt with robustly.
Northampton Police Chief Constable Adrian Lee, the national lead on alcohol harm reduction at the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), told Sky News that many of the incidents are drink-related.
He said: "There was a time when NHS staff, through good motivations and a sense of vocation, didn't want to report crimes against people who were there to receive the service, but actually that's not appropriate because it gets the message across that you can go to a hospital and behave inappropriately - well you can't."
Latest Health Service figures in England also point to worsening safety for hospital staff.
NHS Protect say that in the period 2013-2014, 68,683 members of staff were assaulted, a rise of almost 5,500 on the previous 12 months.
Royal College of Nursing chief executive Dr Peter Carter has called for a tougher approach from both the police and hospital trusts towards offenders.
He said: "Against 68,000 reported assaults last year, there were just 1,600 prosecutions. That's lamentable. This is a major national problem and something needs to be done about it."
As well as stationing officers in A&E units, some forces are also beginning trials of special "drunk tanks" as a way of keeping potentially disruptive patients with more minor ailments out of emergency departments.
Chief Constable Lee, who is overseeing the pilot for ACPO, said: "These facilities don't just help reduce the demand on A&E departments at peak times, but can also have an impact on the atmosphere in emergency departments.
"A long wait in A&E because other people are more seriously injured is one thing, but a long wait surrounded by people who are behaving badly because they are drunk is a completely different experience."
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Hospital Calls To Police 'A Major Problem'
Dengan url
http://kotasepisunyi.blogspot.com/2015/01/hospital-calls-to-police-major-problem.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Hospital Calls To Police 'A Major Problem'
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Hospital Calls To Police 'A Major Problem'
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar