UNISON, the public sector trade union, has appealed for improved working conditions for the employees working at the National Health Services department.

The appeal comes after the release of the latest Boorman report and an incident wherein a psychiatric nurse was attacked while at work and had to be paid compensation. Nurse Juliet Satterthwaite suffered loss of hair and a scarred face during the incident that occurred at St Nicholas Hospital in Gosforth in March 2006.

Juliet was taking care of a patient who had earlier assaulted one of the employees, and had been kept under observation. The patient should have ideally been guarded by two members capable of handling and controlling violent people. However, due to the inadequacy of staff in the hospital, there was only Juliet and an untrained agency nurse to look after the patient in the night shift.

When the patient went out of control, the agency nurse could not restrain him from attacking Juliet. Moreover, the alarms also failed to function at the time of the incident, and the patient managed to hurt Juliet by grabbing her by her hair and attacking her on the face and nose, leaving her with severe wounds before she could be rescued.

Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland Mental Health NHS Trust accepted its responsibility and paid Juliet a compensation of £6,500 in an out-of-court settlement last week.

UNISON Head of Health Karen Jennings expressed her sadness at the incident and felt that such experiences have been quite common for the NHS workers. She emphasized that the Trusts should promptly act to ensure a safe and healthy working environment for workers without waiting for the recommendations of the final Boorman report. She further added that Trusts must also analyse the conditions under which such incidents occur and take preventive health and safety measures to avoid them. In Juliet’s case, the incident could have been easily prevented by having adequate staff in place and fully functional alarms in the ward.

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