More than 260 assaults on healthcare workers reported in June

There were 262 assaults on healthcare workers recorded by the HSE in June, according to figures provided in response to a parliamentary question.

There were 160 assaults on nurses working in the Health Service Executive in the month of June, as well as three assaults against medical staff and one on a dentist.

There were 21 assaults on Allied Health Professionals. These include occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, dieticians and other clinician roles.

The figures, seen by The Irish Times, were provided to Sinn Féin TD and spokesperson on health David Cullinane in response to a parliamentary question.

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The assaults include physical, verbal and sexual assaults on staff which were reported to the HSE’s national incident management system.

In a letter to Mr Cullinane, the HSE said it had been “proactive in encouraging staff to report all incidents. The HSE said it includes incidents which resulted in a “dangerous occurrence” or complaint, as well as “near misses” and “no harm incidents”.

“The number of incident reports should not be considered as indicative of a level of harm. There may also be multiple reports relating to the same incident,” the letter stated.

In a response to an earlier parliamentary question by Mr Cullinane in April, the HSE provided figures for the number of assaults on healthcare workers for a fifteen month period between January 2021 and March 2022.

The total number of assaults on healthcare workers in the fifteen month period was 5,672, or 4,763 in 2021 and 909 in the first three months of 2022.

The HSE said the figures showed there was a “level of annual fluctuation in the reported incidents”, however, the organisation “continued to encourage” reports and said safety of its staff was a “priority”.