GP staff tell of death threats after hundreds of reports of abuse

Staff at a GP surgery were left in tears and forced to call police after incidents in which angry patients threatened them and acted violently.

Nurse consultant Dr Jennifer Loke, who works at the practice in East Yorkshire, said she was forced to press a panic button when one patient started moving towards her, saying, “If you don’t give me that prescription, I’m going to kill you”.

Humberside Police has received 411 reports of abuse towards GP staff in the region since 2019. Although most were verbal, the force investigated assaults, a kidnapping and six death threats.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said it knew current pressures could make it harder for patients to get care, but no one should go to work fearing abuse.

Tom Park-Poulson, a practice administrator, said the “vast majority” of abuse from patients was over the phone and usually triggered if an appointment or prescription could not be given immediately.

One patient, who had not received an immediate appointment, “said he would come down to the surgery and ‘sort us out'”. Another broke a door by slamming it in a rage.

Occasionally, staff had been threatened in person and called police to remove patients from the building, including a time when one “refused to leave until a doctor came to see them there and then”.

“We have had patients try to physically intimidate staff, we’ve had an incident of a team member being shoved in one of the clinical rooms,” Mr Park-Poulson added.

“Some colleagues have been brought to tears.”

The police figures include 19 occasions when staff were assaulted and injured. Officers also investigated two reports of stalking, a kidnapping and six threats to kill.

Among the death threats was one made towards Dr Loke – an academic doctor who works as a nurse consultant.

Police contacted her to say a former patient had said they “wanted to kill me”. A restraining order was put in place.

Dr Loke said she was not frightened by the incident, but abuse took its toll.

“It’s stressful enough to work in a surgery because you have to cope with a lot of complex issues and you need to maintain your cool with patients who are anxious and depressed,” she said.

“And yet you have all this in the background, so it’s quite distressing.”

Most of the patients she saw were “good”, but attitudes had changed because of an “on-demand” and consumer culture.

“Patients think they are customers with rights,” she said. “They think they can just call the GP surgery and get antibiotics in the same way they go to McDonald’s and order an ice cream.”

Dr Loke said general practice was becoming a less attractive place for people to work.

She feared the issue could start to affect staffing levels and called on patients “to modify their behaviour for general practice to survive”.

Brian McGregor, who chair’s the BMA’s Yorkshire regional council, described the police figures as “disappointing and concerning”.

“Even one incident of abuse against GPs and their teams is unacceptable,” he said.

“The current pressures and lack of staff can make it harder for our patients to get the care they need, but people must not take out their frustrations with the system on GPs and their staff – people who are often doing their best in difficult circumstances.”

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