Violence against doctors and nurses: Lower Saxony launches campaign

Insults, threats and also physical assaults: employees in the health sector report increasing violence. The campaign "Who helps, deserves respect" is intended to raise awareness. Samira Bonneik's acts of violence have increased noticeably in recent years in practices and clinics, said Medical Association President Marion Charlotte Renneberg at the start of the nationwide campaign. With the campaign, the industry also wants to make it clear that disrespectful behaviour towards staff is not only harmful to employees, but ultimately also to security of supply.

"Respect for health care workers is a prerequisite for a functioning health care system and a secure supply of the population," said Lower Saxony's Health Minister Andreas Philippi (SPD). The Ministry of Health supports the campaign with 37,800 euros. The campaign involves the Lower Saxony Ministry of Health, the Lower Saxony Medical Association, the Lower Saxony Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, the Marburg Association of Lower Saxony and the Lower Saxony Hospital Society (NKG). The Ministry of Health is supporting the campaign with 37,800 euros. As part of the campaign, more than 700,000 info postcards will be distributed in doctors' offices and hospitals and more than 28,000 posters will be displayed in public places such as bus stops.

In addition, cinema advertising is planned. Number of attacks in Lower Saxony has recently risen According to a survey by the NKG, 72 percent of the clinics surveyed in Lower Saxony have indicated that verbal and physical assaults have increased in the last five years. No hospital surveyed reported a decrease. According to NKG, 130 of the 161 hospitals approved in Lower Saxony took part in the survey last August and September.

Employees in nursing care and the emergency department are particularly affected. "Somehow the inhibition threshold just seems to have fallen, to be unfriendly, to speak condescendingly," said Malte Feuer, chief physician at the KRH clinics Robert Koch Gehrden and Neustadt am Rübenberge. If you have to wait a long time, you will also be insulted. "In the worst case, this goes as far as physical assault," says Feuer.