In one day, 4 nurses were attacked, a phenomenon on the increase

The four attacks on nurses on duty occurred in the space of a few hours, between the evening of Saturday 7 November and Sunday: around 10pm in the emergency room of the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Reggio Emilia, a minor beat up two nurses, one of whom has a fractured jaw and a 30-day prognosis, her colleague of 7 days; it was around one in the morning when in the emergency room of the hospital in Piove di Sacco (Padua) a man in a state of confusion damaged the toilets of the room and broke a mirror, threatening waiting people and health workers with the fragments; again in Veneto, in Marostica (Vicenza), shortly after 10.30 am an operator of the 118 emergency service was attacked with a knife by the son of a patient.

These are the most recent episodes of a constantly increasing phenomenon, Natascia Cersosimo, provincial secretary of the Nursind nurses' union of Reggio Emilia, tells ANSA. The physical and verbal attacks are fueled by "a climate of hatred and distrust towards healthcare workers, which has increased especially after Covid", and by the stress linked to long waits: "this is why we propose to introduce figures who help people understand the path to take, especially when long waiting times make patients and their relatives impatient". The spark of aggression is also triggered because people often arrive in emergency rooms in an altered emotional state due to alcohol or drugs: "in these cases - observes Cersosimo - it doesn't take much to trigger the spark that causes violence to explode".

The Nursind Reggio Emilia union has called for "immediate and concrete interventions to guarantee the safety" of doctors and nurses: "wearable devices for all staff, such as bracelets equipped with an SOS button, to allow the timely activation of alarms", a police station active 24 hours a day in the emergency room, training courses, including self-defense courses, as well as staff dedicated to informing and reassuring waiting patients.

At the moment, the most updated data on attacks on healthcare workers date back to 2025, released by the Ministry of Health, with almost 18,000 reports involving 23,367 healthcare workers. In over 70% of cases there were verbal attacks and physical attacks amounted to one case in six. Nurses are the most exposed category (from 55% to 64% of cases), followed by doctors and surgeons (15-20%) and social and health workers.