Health chiefs' safety failure

Patients and staff at hospitals across NSW are at a greater risk of violence and robbery because of faulty or inadequate alarm systems that the State Government has failed to fix.

Despite a hospital assault being reported to police every day - and thousands more going unreported - staff and patients are left woefully exposed.

An investigation by The Daily Telegraph has revealed that staff duress alarms across the full spectrum of medical centres fail to meet the Government's own basic standards, despite fines totalling more than $200,000 for allowing a nurse to be bashed and kicked repeatedly because of the same faulty system seven years ago.

Seven years down the track and it does not even monitor the number of assaults or robberies that occur.

The last effort to do that was made by The Daily Telegraph in 2004, when we revealed around 3000 assaults and 1200 robberies took place every year.

NSW Health now only catalogues assaults that are reported to the police - roughly one in 10 that take place. Official crime statistics from last year indicating 360 assaults.

An investigation into 14 hospitals and medical centres over the past 12 months revealed that nine had poor alarm systems that failed the Government's own criteria.

They cannot be named for safety reasons, but they include five major hospitals and a Sydney mental health unit.

The Nurses Association found almost all the centres failed to have alarms that notified other staff of the location of the incident.

They also fail to have a "man down" trigger, which activates if the victim is incapacitated.

Source: Joe Hildebrand, The Daily Telegraph