Emergency Response Staff Face Verbal Abuse

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The verbal abuse ambulance control room workers face is enough to make them think about quitting their jobs, according to the results of a recent study.

A new report gathered from 48 employees at a National Health Service (NHS) ambulance service control room serving a population of on 1 million people shows 80 percent of the staff are verbally abused by callers during a shift.

Fifty-nine calls were taken each shift on average, and 7 percent of these calls were verbally abusive. Eighty percent of employees took at least one abusive call per shift. Authors report patients and other emergency callers were the most abusive, followed by doctors and nurses. Members of the fire service were least likely to be abusive.

Survey respondents report the abuse may be due to frustration, anxiety and a general misunderstanding the roles of the emergency control room staff. But the events were bad enough to prompt some control room staff to consider leaving their jobs.

The authors recommend additional training to defuse verbally abusive situations. They also recommend conducting further research to determine the full extent of verbal abuse across the National Health Service.

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SOURCE: Emergency Medicine Journal, 2007;24:281-282