Often triggered by long waits in A&E, corridor care and chronic understaffing, the Royal College of Nursing has called the rise in violence against nurses “utterly abhorrent”.
The Royal College of Nursing has described the rise in violence against nurses caused by lengthy waits in A&E, corridor care and chronic understaffing as “utterly abhorrent”.
Freedom of Information requests to 89 trusts in England found that incidences of physical violence against staff have almost doubled from 2,093 in 2019 to 4,054 in 2024.
“Behind these shocking figures lies an ugly truth. Dedicated and hard-working nursing staff face rising violent attacks because of systemic failures that are no fault of their own,” said RCN general secretary and chief executive Nicola Ranger. “Every incident is unacceptable, but we need ministers and trust leaders to acknowledge some of the key underlying causes,” she continued.
The rise has been so pronounced that it means during a typical working day in England, a member of staff working in the emergency department is being attacked every hour.
Absolutely shocking
“Nursing staff not only go to work underpaid and undervalued, but now face a rising tide of violence. It leads to both physical and mental scarring, lengthy time off and sometimes staff never returning. It’s unarguably true that you can’t fix the health service when vital staff are too scared to even go into work,” said Ranger.
The data caused ructions in the sector. Responding to the findings on violence against A&E staff, the chief executive of NHS Providers, Daniel Elkeles, said: “These findings are absolutely shocking.
“NHS staff need a safe and respectful environment to look after patients, free from any threat of violence or intimidation, be they in hospital, mental health, community or ambulance settings,” he continued.
“It’s heartbreaking that 25 years after the Zero Tolerance Policy was first introduced in the NHS, numbers of violent incidents are increasing,” said Neil Rowe, senior in‑house counsel at THEMIS Clinical Defence. “The further tragedy is that in turn this increases the potential for claims to be made against the NHS at a time it can least afford it.”
As Healthcare Today has regularly highlighted, the root cause of the problem is delays at A&E. Between 2019 and 2024, 3,869 cases of A&E negligence were settled by NHS Trusts, caused by a drastic rise in patient waiting times. It is not getting any better. NHS staff experienced the busiest year on record for A&E and ambulance services last year. And as we reported in June, analysis by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) shows that there were more than 16,600 deaths associated with long A&E waits before admission in England last year. That’s an increase of 20% (2,725) compared to 2023.
