PSNI attended3 abuse calls

During the same period there was no physical abuse of staff reported through Trust incident report forms.

DUP MLA Gregory Campbell asked the Minister on how many occasions police called to assist Health Service staff because of the threat of violence at each acute

hospital’s A&E department in 2011.

Providing details for each hospital rather than each A&E Department, Mr Poots revealed Altnagelvin was the only hospital where there were no physical incidents and that it had the second lowest number of reported incidents after the Ulster Hospital.

Last year the Sentinel reported how levels of abuse - nurses, doctors and social workers were physically attacked 780 times in the Western Health and Social Care Trust (WHSCT) in 2010 - were not being fully reported to the PSNI.

In 2009/10 just eight assaults at Altnagelvin - the largest facility in the Western Trust - were reported to the PSNI in Foyle.

This was in spite of WHSCT figures showing there were over 1,277 cases of verbal and physical abuse against healthcare staff in the Western Trust area in 2009/10.