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Speaker 1: Almost everyone working in emergency departments has been abused by

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Speaker 1: drunk people. This is according to a new trans Tasman study.

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Speaker 1: A staggering ninety seven percent experience verbal aggression, ninety two

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Speaker 1: percent physical aggression, and nearly ninety percent fail unsafe. Doctor

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Speaker 1: Laura Joyce is a specialist at Christ Church ed In

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Speaker 1: the hospital.

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Speaker 2: There.

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Speaker 1: She co authored the study. She's with me now, Hello, Hello,

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Speaker 1: thank you for talking to me today. Have you Can

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Speaker 1: you just give us an example of when you've been

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Speaker 1: abused in the hospital.

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Speaker 2: I have many examples. It's not an infrequent occurrence. So

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Speaker 2: patients will come in intoxicated with injuries, and we have

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Speaker 2: to deal with them when they're not being the in

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Speaker 2: their right mind to be the nicest people. We have

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Speaker 2: relatives who are intoxicated and we're trying to look after

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Speaker 2: their elderly loved ones or their children, and they're interfering

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Speaker 2: in the care of their loved ones because they are intoxicated.

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Speaker 2: And so this actually affects every person who comes from

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Speaker 2: ad not just the patience and not just the staff,

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Speaker 2: but everyone who is in the department at the time.

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Speaker 1: And how often are people actually throwing punctures, you know,

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Speaker 1: getting hit.

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Speaker 2: We try to avoid that. So we have a number

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Speaker 2: of de escalation strategies we can use, and we would

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Speaker 2: hope that we would never need to use those. There

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Speaker 2: is a lot of verbal aggression occurring. We are very

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Speaker 2: lucky in christ You at GD that we have security

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Speaker 2: staff twenty four seven who can help to de escalate

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Speaker 2: but also protect us in the case of violence.

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Speaker 1: Is there a part of you, and I know you

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Speaker 1: have an oath, but is there a part of you

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Speaker 1: that just goes if these people are coming in here

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Speaker 1: abusing me, they don't deserve my care.

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Speaker 2: I think everyone deserves our care, but we don't deserve

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Speaker 2: to be treated like this. I don't know any other

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Speaker 2: industry we're having ninety eight percent of your staff abused

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Speaker 2: would be considered acceptable. But it just seems to be

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Speaker 2: par for the course in healthcare and it's not right.

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Speaker 2: And we know that people will leave the health system,

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Speaker 2: they'll leave New Zealand and there'll be no one less

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Speaker 2: to careful patients.

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Speaker 1: What do you do about it? I mean you can

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Speaker 1: only security. You can't security up the WASO. I mean

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Speaker 1: that becomes impractical and too expensive. So what can you do?

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Speaker 2: No, we need to stop the problem. Right where it's occurring.

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Speaker 2: We need to stop alcohol related harm. So alcohol is

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Speaker 2: cheap and available and you can get it at three

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Speaker 2: o'clock in the morning from your local alcohol shop. That

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Speaker 2: might be beside a kiddy, it might be beside a school,

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Speaker 2: it might be where vulnerable patients live. We need to

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Speaker 2: restrict the supply of alcohol to reduce the harm that

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Speaker 2: it's causing.

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Speaker 1: If I mean, I've heard this before from from emergency

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Speaker 1: department doctors. If we don't sell alcohol, I mean, people

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Speaker 1: will find if people want to get high off something,

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Speaker 1: they'll get high off something, won't they They will.

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Speaker 2: But the problem is cheap alcohol. So we need minimum

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Speaker 2: unit pricing because if you are buying a ten dollars

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Speaker 2: a bottle of wine, you're going to drink more bottles,

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Speaker 2: aren't you, no matter what your financial resources. We need

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Speaker 2: to increase in minimum unit price on alcohol so that

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Speaker 2: that cheap, you know, low quality alcohol is not available

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Speaker 2: to people to do harm for themselves in ads.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, interesting, Laura, thank you for that, doctor Laura Joyce.

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Speaker 1: They study co author specialists in the christ Church Hospital.

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