In 2023, a total of 2,840 attacks against nurses were reported in Spain, or eight per day on average, according to data from the Observatory of Attacks by the General Council of Nurses (CGE)which represents an increase of more than 10 percent compared to the previous year, when 2,580 incidents were recorded.
“There are limits that cannot be crossed, because the altruism of our professionals does not imply lasting humiliation or aggression. With violence, whether verbal or physical, we must have zero tolerance. There is no justification for being afraid or suffering injuries, threats or insults when simply carrying out your job at work,” says the president of the General Nursing Council, Florentino Pérez Raya.
This week, cases of attacks against nurses were known in the Canary Islands or Cádiz, while the report highlights the increase in cases compared to 2022 in Aragon (+145), Canary Islands (+142), in the Balearic Islands (+101). ) and Cantabria (+72). By autonomous community, Andalusia is the one that recorded the greatest number of these events, with 752, followed by the Balearic Islands (369), Aragon (242), Castile and León (232) and Galicia ( 212), Navarre (199). ), Murcia (165), Asturias (155), Canary Islands (153) and Castile-La Mancha (136).
On the contrary, The regions that reported the fewest attacks are Ceuta (1), Melilla (1), Extremadura (14), Valencian Community (15), Madrid (30), Catalonia (31), La Rioja (53) and Cantabria (80). While there is no data in the Basque Country.
For his part, the director of the Observatory of Aggressions and Secretary General of the CGE, Diego Ayuso, explains that “this increase is not really due to the fact that attacks are increasing in such an alarming manner, but rather because of a greater awareness of professionals when reporting and greater sensitivity when recording data by the autonomous communities.
For Ayuso, this data does not reflect the total number of actual attacks. “We know that violent incidents in our health centers are under-reported, especially when they refer to insults and threats, because they go unreported. So, since the General Nursing Council “We always emphasize the need to report these events, because an aggression, physical or verbal, that is not reported is a fact that is not known and, therefore, does not exist,” underlines- he.
The professional who suffers an attack, whether verbal or physical, can suffer “a lot of frustration, a lot of worry” and, also, can lead to sick leave and affect them at a professional level in the way they carry out their activity, “because often those who suffer an attack think that they have done something wrong, when in reality it is a situation that does not has nothing to do with this colleague’s attitude or professionalism.”
On the contrary, this situation can arise due to “the stress and anxiety felt by a patient or family member, due to the fact that their expectations have not been met, due to the system deficiencies and not because of the specific performance of a professional,” Ayuso emphasized.
