Tackling violence and aggression in A&E

 Following initial research, several ‘prototype’ systems for better ‘greeting’ patients on their arrival at hospital, and subsequently guiding them through their ‘treatment journey’, were developed by a designers, alongside a comprehensive ‘toolkit’ of best practice and recommendations to advise and inform staff such as estates and facilities managers on the key physical and environmental features to consider ‘building in’ when making important decisions on major refurbishment or alteration of existing A&E units. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.

According to the National Audit Office, violence and aggression towards frontline hospital staff is estimated to cost the NHS at least £69 million annually in staff absence, loss of productivity, and additional security. The Design Council’s dedicated webpages, which describe in detail the background to, and actions taken to date, as part of the Reducing violence and aggression in A&E project (viewable at http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/ our-work/challenges/Health/AE/), add that ‘as many as 56,000 physical assaults occur in English hospitals each year’. They also emphasise that ‘in A&E departments, the problem of violence and aggression is particularly difficult to solve’. The extensive and extremely informative Design Council internet content dedicated to this latest collaboration between the leading designers’ organisation and the DH points out that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, has said that the Government will ‘accept nothing less than a zero tolerance approach to those who attack NHS staff’. This project, the initial results of which were unveiled recently at the Design Council’s London offices, set out, however, to discover some of the key triggers that lead to violent incidents in A&E units, and subsequently to establish some valuable pointers and cost-effective practical future steps that might be taken to address the problem.

Starting with research