Prince Charles has slammed “unacceptable” violent attacks against NHS staff.
The Prince of Wales visited Chelsea and Westminster hospital on Thursday (18.06.21) and was horrified by the stories he was told of abuse aimed at frontline staff and voluneers.
He exclaimed: “You can’t believe it, can you?”
He then went on to praise “wonderful” NHS workers and queried why anyone would want to attack people trying to “look after” them.
He said: “When I think of what it has been like for so long, and how many people have been lucky enough to have wonderful paramedics and ambulance staff coming to their rescue… but now you find the situation rising – violence, attacks, verbal attacks, racial abuse and everything else. To me, it’s unreal, unacceptable. Why attack the people who are trying to look after you?”
Charles was told how many of the staff and volunteers view being abused as a normal part of the job.
London Ambulance Service volunteer James Holt told him: “We get so used to the verbal abuse that we don’t ever report it.
“It’s only when you think about it, you realise how normalised it has become for us. It happens so regularly, we almost forget about it.”
Zaidia Hussain left the prince lost for words when she recalled having a knife pulled on her, while Shurelle Elevique admitted she’d been the victim of racist abuse.
Zaidia said afterwards: “You have to be so aware of what’s around you when you go into a house, which shouldn’t be your focus. It should be the patient.
“I have managed to get two convictions (against people). One man racially abused me and then tried to hit me. And the second was a lady that pulled a knife on us.”
Charles told the group their treatment was “inexcusable”.
He said: “What would we do without you?
“I was very interested to hear about the things that you have had to put up with. It’s inexcusable.
“We owe you a huge debt of gratitude.”
According to NHS figures, there were 529 reported incidents of violence and 834 reports of verbal abuse and threats on London Ambulance staff between April 2020 and January 2021. And in the same period there were a total of 3,569 ambulance staff assaulted in England, a 32 percent increase from five years ago