Knowing how to react to violent behavior is the objective of the training that front-line health professionals will receive. Agents of the National Police and corporate security of the Madrid Health Service will be those who will collaborate in this activity, which will begin this Monday in a health center in the Madrid city of Móstoles.
Throughout the month of November, in four of the seven existing primary care directorates, the first phase of this learning will begin, which will affect 400 students. In Móstoles, health workers from several of them will be concentrated in a single health center to receive training. It will be followed in the following weeks by those of Fuenlabrada and Alcorcón, as well as other neighboring towns, which have not yet been finalized.
With these courses, officials of the Ministry of Health have set the objective of “providing participants with techniques and tools for communication in situations of conflict and possible attacks in health centers or any other device of the first public health level of Madrid”. .
To give the courses, there will be National Police agents who are experts in handling this type of situation. For this, there is the figure of the Health Police Contact, created to advise the Health Administration on the implementation of preventive measures. Its motto is: “When attacks are not reported by health professionals, they remain silent and those responsible go unpunished, encouraging their recurrence.” Their advice includes having an escape route open in case it is necessary, removing any disposable objects or items that they could use as a weapon from the alleged attacker’s reach, or having a panic button.
For their part, members of the technical area of the Primary Care Occupational Risk Prevention Service will also teach in these courses, among other things, the Conflict Protocol with Users.
Attacks against health personnel have continued to grow in recent years: they went from 8,306 in 2017 – with data from the Ministry of Health for all of Spain – to 14,749 in 2023, with only one decrease , recorded in 2020 for obvious reasons. reasons: we were stuck at home. Among them, 78 percent of cases correspond to women. Eight out of ten incidents were verbal attacks – insults or threats – and the rest were physical.
