The AMA has backed calls for greater workplace safety measures to reduce patient violence in general practice.
In recognition of National Safe Work Month, the AMA has renewed calls for government action to protect the healthcare workforce from workplace violence.
The AMA described workplace violence as a daily reality for frontline medical workers and comes in the same week that a Sydney GP was allegedly stabbed by a patient.
This call comes after a recently published study in the British Journal of General Practice outlined the contributing factors to this disruption, with long waiting times and unmet patient demands listed as the most common reason for patients escalating their behaviour.
The UK-led research showed not just the prevalence of workplace abuse experience in healthcare but also what the effect of it has on the workforce.
Verbal abuse was listed as the most common form of abuse, whilst physical abuse, sexual abuse, threats, stalking, defamation, vexatious complaints and property damage were also reported in the UK findings.
“Everyone has the right to feel safe at work,” AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen said.
“Yet violence in hospitals and healthcare facilities remains an unacceptable and all-too-common experience for many doctors.
“Safe work environments are essential for clinical learning, quality care, and better patient outcomes. They support not only the wellbeing of doctors, but also the safety and recovery of patients.
“Eliminating violence in the medical workplace benefits everyone. When we protect our doctors, we protect our patients — and strengthen the entire health system.”
Internationally, the World Health Organisation has projected that just under 40% of medical professionals will experience physical violence in their careers, with Safe Work Australia identifying healthcare as a high-risk industry.
The RACGP has also made calls for better workplace safety strategies following the stabbing of a Sydney GP on Friday night.
The 85-year-old GP was allegedly stabbed in the neck by a patient inside the Pitt Street practice.
Emergency services responded to the incident at around 7pm on Friday, and the doctor was treated by paramedics at the scene. The GP is now reportedly in hospital in a stable condition.
This has been described by the college as a ‘wake-up call’ for general practice to push for greater safety measures that match the level of other frontline healthcare workforces.
“In hospitals, and particularly in emergency departments, there are security and support systems and money being sent spent to ensure training and infrastructure is in place to support their nurses and their doctors,’ RACGP NSW&ACT chair Dr Rebekah Hoffman told NewsGP.
“We really don’t have the same in general practice – in general practice, we’re private businesses.
“All of those costs are absorbed by the practice and we definitely don’t have the same infrastructure spending to maintain safety.”
Other RACGP members have also highlighted how some patient disgruntlement comes from a lack of understanding of what a GP’s role is in healthcare.
“This concept that a patient is a consumer, so a consumer goes to a service to have their expectations met, and if the expectations aren’t met, that is an inherent failure of a service,” RACGP Victoria chair Dr Anita Munoz told The Medical Republic, commenting on the UK study.
“The ‘consumer is always right’ concept does not work in medicine, because sometimes the best thing that you can do for a person is say no … that path is not going to be in your best interest.
“We need to be really careful about the messages that we send out to the community about what our role is, because our role is to give advice about what are evidence-based treatments and interventions that cause more good than harm.”
