When I was five months pregnant a patient who had previously been violent towards staff, stabbed me in the hand with a dart while I was examining him. I was lucky, the physical injury was relatively minor, however the mental impact of this encounter was far greater than I had realised. Ten years later and the memory is still as vivid as the day it happened.
Stories such as these are becoming increasingly common across healthcare. In a 2023 survey of 271 GPs by Medical Protection, nearly three quarters (73%) said they have experienced or witnessed verbal or physical abuse from patients or their relatives in the past 12 months, with 50% of those saying the incidents resulted from staff shortages and 53% saying it was due to the referral waiting list. GP locums are not immune to this abuse, and may even be more vulnerable to it if a patient is distressed about not seeing their usual doctor or if they are working in an unfamiliar environment and are not aware of the risk that an individual patient could pose.
Some GPs locums who have experienced lower levels of criminal or violent activity from patients contact Medical Protection to ask whether they can report these incidents to the police. Sometimes there is no physical injury; they can be victims of theft, verbal abuse and other crimes, and there is concern as to whether they are deemed ‘sufficient’ or appropriate to breach confidentiality. Racial abuse and whether staff can report this, or are required to continue seeing the patients if undertaking a longer term locum role, is also a common concern.