Nurse lays bare the shocking levels of abuse she has received while trying to work
8 June 2021, 11:10
Nurse says she is getting abuse shouted at her in the street
Anne, a district nurse, from Wiltshire called James O'Brien to talk about the burnout of NHS staff, but ended up revealing she has suffered abuse in the street.
The caller told LBC she gets abuse shouted on the streets, which led James to ask who would do that to a nurse?
Anne said she thought "some people are just frustrated and I'm a person in a uniform."
The call comes just days after it was revealed 3,569 ambulance staff were physically assaulted by members of the public last year – 30% more than in 2016-17.James asked what kind of abuse she had suffered, if she could repeat it on the radio.
"I've had someone shout a very long spiel how the NHS weren't doing enough for Covid," the nurse said.
"Not doing enough?" James asked, "and then you cross the road and someone is shouting at you for doing too much?"
Anne agreed, and then revealed she had even got abuse because someone thought she was parked in their space.
"We have people shout at us because they feel we're going in and out of a street too often, we're causing too much traffic. There are people stuck at home watching everything."
Anne's shocking call comes as the Health and Social Care Committee found workforce burnout across the NHS and social care has reached an emergency level and poses a risk to the future functioning of both services.
Prerana Issar, the chief people officer for the NHS, told the Guardian: “Every member of our dedicated and hardworking NHS staff has the fundamental right to be safe at work and it is our priority to eliminate violence and abuse, which we will not tolerate. As well as reducing the number of incidents towards our staff, these cameras are a vital step towards ensuring our people feel safe too.”
