Citation

Gulati G, Kelly BD, Dunne CP, Glynn L. Fam. Pract. 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/fampra/cmab060

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Violence and aggression refer to a range of behaviours or actions that can result in harm, hurt or injury to another person, regardless of whether the violence or aggression is physical or verbal, whether physical harm is sustained or whether the intention is clear. Between 2013 and 2014, there were 68 683 assaults reported against National Health Service (NHS) staff in England, of which 25% involved primary care staff (1). A majority of GPs report experiencing violence at some point over the course of their careers (2-5). These incidents have the potential to impact on the safe working of primary care staff and GPs, as well as affecting the care that patients receive. However, a significant proportion of violence in health care settings goes unreported (6). Violence against doctors has become an increasingly concerning international phenomenon with the COVID-19 pandemic (7,8) and this includes doctors in primary care settings (9). The International Committee of the Red Cross recorded over 600 incidents of threats and violence towards health care workers between February and July 2020 and this is acknowledged to be an underestimate (7). A large study from China reported that over 2800 doctors, nearly one in five surveyed, had experienced verbal or physical violence during the pandemic (10). There is a paucity of data on absolute rates of violence in different practice settings but reports from the international medical community are cause for growing concern. Attacks on health care workers during the pandemic have included, for example, throwing of faeces and sending of funeral wreaths to doctors in Latin America, a denial of funeral rites to a deceased doctor in India, the stabbing of a doctor in India, an attack on a health care worker by a mob in Russia, an attack with bleach in the Philippines as well as gun-related violence towards doctors in parts of Pakistan (11-14). There remains a relative paucity of research in the area of interventions aimed at reducing such violence...

Language: en