Is the "Zero Tolerance" campaign punching below its weight?

So I don't have a blog post for you this week as my Uni schedule is becoming a little much at the moment, but this is a political story I wrote for an assignment a couple of weeks back. Although it was the reason behind a lot of my stress at the time I was pretty happy with the final result.

There are no concrete steps to ensure the safety of nurses and paramedics, despite the government’s $1.35 million dollar advertising campaign targeting occupational violence for healthcare workers.

A Registered Nurse (RN) within the Emergency Department, whom has been in the industry for over 25 years, said the violence is continually increasing as both patients and their relatives will lash out, as she faces verbal aggression and threats of physical harm.

“Violence in my workplace is something I think of and consider daily when doing my job,” she said.

The assaults have led to reconstructive surgeries on knees, shoulders, and spines with some never being able to return to nursing.

In creating a safer working environment she believes two police officers should be allocated to all emergency service departments with officers armed with tasers and guns.

She believes that this will eventually happen although it scares her “to think about what nurse or doctor has to be harmed or killed before that happens”.

Shadow Minister for Health, Mark McArdle, believes that combating violence with violence is not the answer.

“Simply to arm them does not solve the problem, it escalates it into a whole new region of concern,” he said.

The Queensland Nurses Union agrees with this, as it looks to introduce tangible mechanisms such as alarm buttons as opposed to advocating police officers in emergency departments.

Mr McArdle believes providing paramedics and hospital staff with small body cameras is an important prospect for their protection as the footage can be used for evidence and also be a deterrent.

Whilst the RN admits the recent advertising has certainly informed the general public, more needs to be done to ensure the safety of nurses and paramedics in their working environments.

Brad Johnson, a Queensland Ambulance Service paramedic and victim of workplace violence, said in a press conference that the ads were “fairly sanitised really, the reality is a lot more violent”.

The campaign, which aimed to show the real life workplace situations through graphic TV ads, was announced in March this year following instructions from the Paramedic Safety Taskforce.

The Minister for Health and Ambulance Services, Cameron Dick, initiated the taskforce that includes senior Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) executives, paramedics, union representatives and university academics.

The interim report, released by the paramedic taskforce in January, found that the current trend suggests that this years total assaults may increase by nearly 50% compared to last year, exceeding 370 attacks on paramedics alone.

In a media statement Mr Dick, said, “last financial year more than 3300 healthcare workers were physically assaulted”.

A QAS spokesperson said, “it (the violence) affects all aspects of our community and the community as a whole needs to join together to find ways to address violent behaviour”.

The QAS believe this issue needs to be dealt in the same way as drink driving with a shift in the consideration of unacceptable behaviour.

Mr McArdle said, “it (the ad campaign) will have an impact across certain sectors of the community but it’s certainly not going to be the panacea for all concerns.”

“If a person … gets to a point that they are high on drugs on high on the cause of alcohol consumption, no amount of advertising is going to help stop them from doing what they think they are entitled to do,” said Mr McArdle.

The Health and Ambulance Services Minister’s media advisor, Anna Jabour, said, “the Minister is passionate about improving the safety of healthcare workers throughout Queensland”.

The Paramedic Safety Taskforce is set to hand down its final report in the coming weeks.

#ashleighdwan #beyondthestory #journalism