The number of police incidents of violence in common practices in the UK has almost doubled in the last five years, according to a BMJ investigation.
General practitioner leaders say “horrific” attacks, harassment and other forms of abuse against doctors and their staff worsened during the pandemic as operations came under increasing pressure and parts of the media perpetuated the false notion that the services are “closed”.
Dr Chaand Nagpol, president of the British Medical Association, told the Guardian that the rising tide of violence had made GPs and their staff more fearful and at risk of being verbally or physically abused.
Here, three GPs from across the UK speak openly about the growing threat of violence.
GP Alan Stout said employees at his clinic were experiencing rising levels of abuse. Photo: BMA News
Alan Stout, General Practitioner in East Belfast and Chair of the General Ireland Committee of General Practitioners
It started with a telephone consultation – a patient is looking for additional drugs.
During the conversation, he became more and more aggressive and culminated in the fact that he practically went down here and then and would hurt someone.
So we locked the front door. The staff was in the reception and office area. There was only one doctor [duty] he was in his consulting room at the time.
Then the person appeared, kicked the locked front door and burst in, then began attacking the door and window to the front desk, where the front desk staff was.
At that moment, the doctor had to lock himself in their room. They contacted the police, who later arrived and he was arrested.
We get more and more aggression and abuse on the phone, and then sometimes in person. This absolutely affects our practice and staff. Now we keep the front door always locked.
Also, quite disappointingly, we ended up closing for an hour during lunch, mostly to protect our staff. We had tried very hard to stay open all day, but in doing so we were reducing the number of attendees. [at lunchtime]and they were in a very exposed position.
Richard Fairclaw, Partner General Practitioner at Riverside Medical Practice in Musselburgh, East Lothian
We recently had to make the difficult decision to remove the names and photos of our employees from our website, as some of them were targeted by an anonymous Twitter user.
Fortunately, we have not seen the extreme, horrific abuse that some employees have suffered in some other operations, but it has had a very real impact on our team, which in turn affects the care we can provide to our other patients.
We’ve seen members of our call team very upset every day, and we believe that patient abuse – an unprecedented search on the way out of the first block – has contributed to the loss of a significant number of our team members at the end of the call. 2020
There is a very real mismatch between patient demand and the capacity of health services across the country, and that is what it is all about. If patients could get the health care they need quickly and easily, every time, I have no doubt that the abuse would have diminished. “
Dr Adam Janjua said a patient had threatened to stab him. Photo: BMA News
Adam Janjua, General Practitioner in Fleetwood, Lancashire
In the last two or three years, we have seen a huge increase in incidents. I’ve never seen him like that. The last time we had to call the police was a scandal over a face without a mask. They pushed me in the chest. I’m a pretty big man, but if it was someone else, it could cause serious damage.
I’ve had a man who threatens to come down and stab me when I least expect it. We had to update our zero tolerance signs to add a “threat”. The staff feels very mentally exhausted every day.
We have a lot of abuse on the phone, people say things like “You’re not really doing anything.” Most GPs do not report such incidents to the police as they do not want to be tied to bureaucracy and this can take a long time.
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