Around 1.000 episodes of violence against healthcare professionals were recorded last year on the Notifica platform of the Directorate-General for Health, a decrease of 37% compared to 2022, when 1.632 incidents were recorded.
In 2023, 1.036 episodes of violence were reported against nurses, doctors, technical assistants and operational assistants.
«In terms of notifications, (…) records of episodes of violence tell us that 2022 was the year in which we had the highest number of records – there were 1.632 – and last year we had a drop of around 37%», he said Sérgio Barata, coordinator of the Security Office for the Prevention and Combat of Violence against Health Professionals, told the Lusa agency.
According to the person responsible, last year “very positive work was carried out”, indicating that the total data for 2023 is not yet known.
«We only have data from the first half of the year, [the authorities] monitored 1.200 situations. This leads us to suspect (…) that the notification system needs to be improved. This, in essence, alerts us to the need to improve the system here, to facilitate notification, so that we have more immediate numbers and not the lag that we currently have», he highlighted.
From 2022 until the end of the first half of 2023, 302 situations were criminally reported and 62 investigation/disciplinary cases were opened and 458 cases due to accidents on duty, with 4.040 days of absence from work being recorded as a result of episodes of violence.
According to data from the Directorate-General for Health (DGS), the majority of victims of attacks reported last year are nurses (35%), 3% technical assistants and 10% operational assistants.
Regarding professional categories, the coordinator said that, since 2020, the number of notifications from technical assistants and operational assistants has been increasing.
“We also have to bear in mind that, in absolute terms, nurses (…) are the largest professional groups in the National Health Service [SNS], therefore, it is natural that, (…) as they are one of the first faces in care of patients, have a slightly higher expression than other professional categories”, he said.
Psychological violence (67%) is the most evident in the data on reported episodes of violence, followed by physical violence (14%) and moral harassment (5%).
«In 81% of institutions, psychological support is available, these groups also provide legal support – in 65% of institutions they have this legal support – and, therefore, when health professionals go through a situation, they inform and contact these groups more quickly than they do. they register on the DGS platform", he noted.
Between the beginning of 2022 and June 2023, health institutions monitored 3.024 cases, more than those verified by the Notifica platform.
«It is worth saying that these are provisional numbers (…), that is, it is possible that someone will still notify us during the month of January. We use the date of occurrence as technology, that is, it also notifies situations reported at the end of the year,” he added.
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