What constitutes abuse from a patient?
Largely speaking, incidents of abuse from patients towards staff will be covered under the Group Violence and Aggression Policy (RM10). This policy covers the organisation’s obligation to ensure your health & safety at work, including steps to control violence, aggression, harassment, abuse and hate crimes in the workplace.
Incident which may constitute abuse from a patient include both physical assaults, which may result in physical injury or personal discomfort as well as non-physical assaults, which is the use of inappropriate words or behaviour(s) which cause distress. Further definitions can be found in the policy itself, and depending on the incident in question, you may also want to visit other pages such as our patient harassment page or our patient sexual misconduct & violence page.
Examples of unacceptable behaviours which could constitute abuse include threatening or abusive language, derogatory and discriminatory remarks, offensive and sexual gestures and behaviours, willful damage to Trust property, acts of physical violence or verbal assault and more. Further examples can be seen in Appendix F of the policy itself.
