Nurses decry spate of attacks at clinics

Nurses at polyclinics are demanding urgent action after a second violent confrontation in as many days, raising alarm across the public healthcare system over their safety on the job.

The Frederick Miller Polyclinic at The Glebe, St George was the scene of a confrontation by aggressive members of the public on Tuesday. The day before, a nurse at the Randall Phillips Polyclinic was slapped.

Both the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW), and the Barbados Nurses Association (BNA) condemned the incidents and stressed the urgent need for preventive measures and tough responses by the authorities.

NUPW General Secretary Richard Green described the incidents to Barbados TODAY as “intolerable”.

“NUPW received a call from the nurses at the Glebe Polyclinic to respond to an event which was deemed to be threatening,” Green said. “The nurses were having a briefing meeting, and two men approached the room they were in, knocking on the door violently. When one of the nurses opened the door, they responded with aggressive behaviour. The nurses found that behaviour unacceptable and called the police.”

The incident occurred around 11 a.m. affecting approximately seven nurses. It was unrelated to the previous day’s confrontation at the Randal Philips Polyclinic in Oistins, Christ Church, where a nurse was allegedly assaulted by a parent during a dispute over a child’s vaccination, Green said.

BNA President Dr Fay Parris expressed outrage at repeated assaults on frontline healthcare workers. She described the nurses as “visibly and emotionally shaken”.

“We are calling for stiff penalties for these incidences,” Dr Parris said. “We want to push for zero tolerance for violence within healthcare organisations—not only for nurses but all staff present. These acts are simply not acceptable.”

Green said: “This is something that is echoing across the healthcare sector, where workers are fearful and uncomfortable with the current environment, especially the approach that the public is taking to nurses.

“We will continue to make representations in light of this. One of the things that we will be doing as an organisation is to highlight, to campaign, and inform the public that this behaviour towards healthcare workers is unacceptable. And we can no longer tolerate it.”

The NUPW official emphasised that nurses withdrew their services and assisted police with investigations.

“Workers must feel comfortable at work. Otherwise, you’re not going to get any benefit out of them,” he said.

He described these violent encounters as “intolerable, unacceptable, and we are calling for an immediate cessation of this type of behaviour against nurses and all workers in the healthcare sector. But truthfully, this is nothing new. For a number of years, we’ve been dealing with these instances . . . we have asked for an increase in security. But I think we are going to go beyond just the security. We are going to look at more preventative actions, more so than responses to when they happen”.

Dr Parris suggested that assailants of nurses be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

“If the altercation is battery, we want the stiffest penalty for battery that can be given,” the BNA president said. “We don’t want them to get a slap on the wrist and go home. They must understand that this behaviour will meet the full force of the law.”

Incidents of violence against nurses have escalated in the last year. First, a knife-wielding man threatened a nurse at the St Philip Polyclinic in Six Roads, prompting the introduction of increased security measures, including scanners.

In June, a Ghanaian nurse was stabbed in the neck just metres from the St Philip District Hospital while on her way to work.

A month later nurses at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in July received cuts with varying degrees of severity from a female patient wielding a concealed sharp object.

(SZB)