Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many healthcare staff working at (a) hospitals and (b) medical centres in Cornwall have reported being physically assaulted in (i) 2015, (ii) 2016, and (iii) 2017.

Data on the number of healthcare staff who have reported being physically assaulted is not collected centrally nor is data collected by calendar year.

NHS Protect’s “reported physical assaults on National Health Service staff” for 2015/16 showed 747 in total for Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust, Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Peninsula Community Health Interest Company. Of these physical assaults, 652 involved medical factors¹ and 95 did not. Information on whether physically assaulted NHS staff were working at hospitals or medical centres managed by these organisations is not recorded separately.

Employers working alongside local police are responsible for protecting their staff. There has been no central data collection since 2016. The Department is working with NHS England and NHS Improvement on new arrangements to support NHS and primary care employers to “…take vigorous and immediate action against those who abuse or attack the people who work for and make our NHS”.

Note:

¹Assaults involving medical factors are the number of physical assaults where the perpetrator did not know what they were doing, or did not know what they were doing was wrong due to medical illness, mental ill health, severe learning disability or treatment administered.