Violence in GP surgeries driven by waiting times and drug refusals, global study shows | Health
Patient violence and abuses against GP clinics are widespread worldwide and generally triggered by long waiting times and refusal to prescribe requested drugs, according to research.
The results are based on a study by 24 countries on threats and assault that family doctors, receptionists and other members of the practice staff experience at work.
Up to nine members of surgery over 10 GPs underwent physical or verbal assault during their career – in some cases, the same proportion reported it in the previous 12 months.
Threatening behavior can affect the mental health of workers, increase their level of stress and lead them to want to stop.
Research, of ShuNing Chou, associate professor of forensic psychology at the University of Nottingham, is the first to consider the aggression against GP staff as a global phenomenon. It based its results on an analysis of 50 previous studies in 24 countries, including the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait and Barbados.
Professor Kamila Hawthorne, president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, who represents family doctors in the United Kingdom, said: “That abuse incidents against general practitioners and our teams are so widespread – and as this research shows, not only in the United Kingdom – is extremely painful.
Some assaults are so painful that general practitioners call the police or withdraw the perpetrators from their training list, she added.
Pulse, a website for GPS, reported a doctor attacked by a man brandishing a baseball bat and a man wearing knives threatening surgery staff.
According to research, The Waits to patients who may be confronted to see a general practitioner or receiving other health care is the most common reason that some become violent or abusive, according to research, which has been published in the British Journal of General Practice. Between 31% and 73% of the GP staff questioned in previous studies identified it as the trigger for the attack.
“Uncapped patient requirements” – such as GPS refusing to prescribe requested drugs or sick people frustrated by the quality of their treatment – were the second most frequent reason.
The research document said that “certain studies have considered that staff actions may have contributed to the violence felt by suggesting possible causes such as inadequate staff training on professionalism, interpersonal skills, conflict management or staff attitudes”. Women, the youngest and less experienced, including receptionists, have the weight of the assault, he found.
Dr. Julius Parker, vice-president of the GPS Committee of the British Medical Association, said: “General practice in the United Kingdom and around the world is the gateway to health care-and general practitioners are on the front line in the face of people with suffering and who are anxious and in distress, often frustrated by wider systems.
“But no amount of frustration apologizes against general practitioners here or abroad, as described in this research.”
Research last year by MDDUS, a medical defense organization, revealed that 84% of general practitioners who participated in an investigation had been verbally abused and 24% physically abused in the previous year. In an incident, a patient with cocoat coughs a receptionist when he did not obtain a prescription he wanted.
Pulse also reported how Dr. Osama Farooq, a general practitioner in Fife in Scotland, suffered cuts and bruises when he was attacked and abused racly outside a store after finishing a quarter of 12 hours in his operation. He left practice because he no longer felt safe in the city.
