The government is spending an extra $5.7 million on security in emergency departments across the country for summer. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
An emergency doctor says having more security guards over summer will make a difference to hospitals' waiting room safety.
The government is spending an extra $5.7 million on security in emergency departments across the country for summer, after an "increased frequency" of violent incidents at hospitals.
Auckland City Hospital will get five dedicated security guards for its emergency department, and emergency medicine specialist Dr Mark Friedericksen said it would make a difference.
"They're not a let's cause trouble presence, they're a calming presence to try and reduce people actually becoming aggressive, and aggressive to our staff. We value all our staff, all our patients and their whānau," he said.
"If you can de-escalate before there's any physical violence, you've won. Emergency departments survive on teamwork and our security officers are a big part of that teamwork."
Dr Friedericksen said the emergency department's waiting room was often an intense environment.
"One of our main pressures is within our waiting room area. It's not fit for purpose in 2023 and patients wait a long time and if you or I were sitting in the waiting room for a long time, you would be upset," he said.
"Physical assault luckily is rare, verbal assault happens on a daily basis."
Dr Mark Friedericksen said the five additional security guards for Auckland City Hospital would make a difference. Photo: Supplied
Te Whatu Ora said there were 1267 assaults at its hospitals between January and March this year alone - more than the total for 2021.
"The important thing to understand in [regard to] most of the patient or whānau violence interactions is they're vulnerable," Dr Friedericksen said.
"We see them at their most vulnerable when they're at their lowest, they're worried for their healthcare, under the influence of drugs, alcohol and they're just worried. There's a lot of verbal abuse, physical abuse, and we just don't condone that."
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said the increased security needed to continue beyond summer.
"A lot of our EDs are very busy and they're quite crowded so having more support for the clinical staff to get on and do the work that they are trained to do is a really welcome development," she said.
"By the time we get through summer then we'll be starting to hit the winter surge. EDs are the front doors of our hospitals they are never really not busy so it's important that workforce supports are made longer term."
Dr Shane Reti said the additional 200 security guard roles would be funded until late February. Photo: Supplied
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti said he was working on a longer-term plan to improve security in hospitals.
"We'll learn a lot from this period of time, have we got the numbers right for the eight high risk hospitals five FTE [full-time equivalent positions], is that the right number? It's my plan to bring up a proposal to have pervasive improved security across all of the emergency departments."
The extra 200 security guard roles would be funded till late February, he said.
"They'll have all of the training that an ED security guard might be expected to have," Reti said.
"They have all the tools that current security guards have, there's no new tools that we're giving them. They don't have the tools of police for example. In certain circumstances in a triaged way they do have the tools of restraint but a large part of the toolset is actually talking."
Reti said the rise in violence at hospital waiting rooms was concerning.
"The ED teams here and across the country are describing physical assaults on their person as well as verbal assaults and that is not acceptable and that is what we want to appropriately manage."