Published: 12:03 BST, 17 August 2026 | Updated: 18:05 BST, 17 August 2026
I have just finished a night shift in A&E – and am writing this now still feeling sick about what I saw.
Not because the night was filled with cardiac arrests, dying patients or terrified families. After 25 years in emergency medicine, I have seen all that many times before and I’ve learned to accept it as part of a job.
But I am shocked and sickened because I saw staff being punched in the face, kicked and spat at in one of the most frightening and ferocious assaults I’ve ever witnessed from a patient.
And it happened in a corridor full of patients horrified by what they saw, many lying on trolleys and unable simply to move away from the violence and fearful they, too, would be hurt.
Worse still, the patient who attacked our staff should never have been in our department in the first place; he was only there because he was waiting for a mental health bed.
Hospitals are supposed to be places of safety, not places where frightened patients watch staff being attacked and who are themselves at risk.
Yet violence in A&E is happening in hospitals up and down the country. It’s a national crisis that needs to be addressed urgently – but I fear it will take the awful death of a medical professional or a patient before the powers-that-be wake up to this.
And this could happen sooner rather than later unless something changes.
Violence in A&E is not new. But the violence now feels worse and the risks greater than ever before.
There are two reasons for this: a lack of mental health beds; and because the violence from drugged and intoxicated patients that used to be managed in police stations now seems to be managed much more frequently in A&E departments.
Violence in A&E is not new. But the violence now feels worse and the risks greater than ever before, writes Rob Galloway
The latest annual anonymous NHS Staff Survey showed one in seven had experienced physical violence from a patient or member of the public during the previous year
The true scale of the problem remains hidden – for while hospital trusts record large numbers of incidents of verbal abuse, threats and violence towards staff every year, many staff do not formally report what happens to them.
But have a look at the latest annual anonymous NHS Staff Survey, published in March, for a true picture of the shocking state we’re in.
