Beefed up security or blocking patients: how to respond to patient violence

On 20 December 2022, a patient was refused a prescription at Wilson Street GP surgery in Derby. The patient threw furniture, ripped apart posters, and left reception staff reeling from the assault. In the wake of the attack, Wilson Street Surgery GP Shehla Imtiaz-Umer posted on Twitter: “Negative media narrative, anti-GP rhetoric, unrelenting demand & unrealistic expectations leads to this level of violence.” She wrote, “It was a miracle that no one was physically harmed. Who or what will stop this?”The incident was one of several such attacks on GP surgeries that made headlines in 2021 and 2022, including an attack at a surgery in Oldham in September 2021 that left a GP with a fractured skull.1 An investigation in May 2022 by The BMJ found that the number of violent incidents at UK general practices recorded by police forces had doubled in five years, with 1086 incidents for 2021-22,…
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