Increase in violent patients at Geneva University Hospital

Staff at the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) are increasingly experiencing physical and verbal attacks from patients. Two-thirds of the serious cases occurred in psychiatric hospitals, the HUG announced on Thursday.

In 2023, Geneva’s university hospitals recorded around a thousand physical and verbal attacks on staff. Of these, 308 were classified as serious. The number of serious cases has almost doubled since 2020, the HUG writes.

Most of these serious attacks occurred in the psychiatric ward (63%) and the emergency room (17%). According to HUG, security officers’ interventions since 2018 showed a continued increase in physical aggression.

The hospital management points out that this finding does not only apply to Geneva. According to the French Observatory on Violence in Healthcare, twice as many nurses are affected by incidents and physical or verbal violence at work compared to the rest of the workforce.

To strengthen the fight against this violence problem, the HUG would like to encourage its employees to systematically report such attacks. The process for reporting violent crimes is currently being simplified to ensure better tracking and implement preventive and corrective measures, the statement continued.

The HUG also wants to offer training to its employees and run an internal poster campaign to remind people that a zero-tolerance culture towards violence was introduced at the HUG in 2016. (sda/lyn)