NHS nurses report 'aborrent' A&E violence - spitting, punches and gun threats

Nurses are facing "abhorrent" violence in A&Es including being punched, spat at and even having a gun pointed at one of them.

Violent incidents against nurses are now taking place every hour on average as new data shows cases have doubled in England since 2019. The Royal College of Nursing says the worrying rise is linked to longer patient waits in overstretched A&Es and the ‘corridor care’ they have to provide.

One senior A+E nurse based in east London told the nurses’ union of seeing colleagues punched, kicked while one even had a gun pointed at them. She has herself been spat at by a patient and threatened with an acid attack and developed depression and anxiety. It comes after a man claims 'I died for seven minutes in hospital - here's exactly what I saw on the other side'.

The nurse said she has since had to take a break from the profession to recover. She added: “The violence I saw made me become more fearful outside of work. I saw how volatile people can be.”

Rachelle McCarthy, a senior charge nurse in the East Midlands, was punched “square in the face” by a “drunk, six foot two bloke”. She said: “Even patients you would expect to be placid are becoming irate because of just how long they have to wait. You can only imagine the behaviour of those who are already prone to violence.”

Sarah Tappy, a senior sister in an A+E in East London, was in a waiting room when a patient punched her in the head knocking her unconscious. She later developed anxiety and PTSD as a result of the incident. She said: “The violence is awful. And it’s just constant. Nurses, doctors, receptionists – none of us feel safe.”

The RCN sent Freedom of Information requests to 129 hospital trusts and 89 replied with data on violent attacks. There were 4,054 cases of physical violence against A&E staff recorded in 2024, up from 2,093 in 2019.

Another senior A+E nurse in the South West of England told of multiple occasions where she had witnessed violence in her ward including seeing a patient “pinning a nurse up against a wall” and another punching a member of staff “in the groin and stomach”. She said: “It’s not going to help with our retention and recruitment if you think you’re going to be clobbered every shift.”

RCN general secretary and chief executive Professor Nicola Ranger said: "Nursing staff not only go to work underpaid and undervalued but now face a rising tide of violence. It leads to both physical and mental scarring, lengthy time off and sometimes staff never returning.

"Measures to keep staff safe day-to-day are crucial, but the stark reality is that unless the Government does something about lengthy waits, corridor care and understaffed nursing teams, more nursing staff will become victims of this utterly abhorrent behaviour.

"Left unaddressed, this could see plans to reform the NHS fail completely."