Article
Violence against trainee paediatricians
J G Mackin
Foyle Community HSS
Trust, Little Acorns Paediatric Unit, Bridgeview House, Gransha Park,
Derry, Northern Ireland BT47 1TG, UK
Correspondence to: Dr Mackin gerry.mackin{at}lineone.net
Accepted 11 September
2000
BACKGROUND
Much research has looked
at the extent of violence against doctors, but this has been restricted
mainly to psychiatry, general practice, and accident and emergency.
AIMSTo assess the level of
violence against trainee paediatricians.
METHODSA telephone questionnaire
was addressed to 25 specialist registrars/senior registrars/senior SHOs
in each of three regions in the UK: Northern Ireland, South Thames, and
North West England.
RESULTSSixty eight of 75 (90.7%)
trainee paediatricians had been exposed in at least one circumstance to
a violent incident, 47 of which incidents (62.3%) had occurred in the
past year. Thirty one (41%) had suffered threats on at least one
occasion. Although only 5.3% of the interviewees had been victims of
actual physical assault, more than 10% said that an attempted assault
had taken place. Most of the doctors who had experienced a violent
episode (41/68) worried about the incident after return from work and yet only one was offered any counselling. Only nine (13.2%) had ever
formally reported an incident to hospital management. Less than 10% of
those questioned had received any formal training in the management of
violent people, although 99% thought this would be a good idea.
CONCLUSIONSPaediatric
trainees are involved in high risk situations at work (for example,
child protection and casualty) which frequently result in exposure to
violence. Very few report these incidents officially, but often
underplay them. More attention should be given to the training and
counselling needs of paediatric trainees.
Keywords: violence; paediatricians
© 2001 by Archives of Disease in Childhood
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