Almost every hour a health worker is bitten, spat at, punched, abused or threatened while trying to care for patients in Victorian hospitals. Public hospitals and the ambulance service have made the number of these reports public for the first time, providing the clearest picture yet of the threat faced by doctors, nurses and other workers. There were 8627 reports of occupational violence in hospitals in the year to July, and of those 1166 cases resulted in staff injury or illness, an analysis of health services’ annual reports reveals.
