Bendigo Health workers will soon wear body cameras in a new trial to combat occupational violence aimed at frontline workers.
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The cameras will be worn by the security staff who are provided to the hospital by Spotless.
Bendigo Health emergency department director Simon Smith hoped the cameras would help decrease violent altercations between staff and patients.
"We are looking to introduce some new things in the hospital, very soon we will be having a trial of having cameras on staff and any footage on that will be secured," he said.
The trial is led by Spotless and will begin on Monday.
Dr Smith said there had been an increase in occupational violence experienced at Bendigo Health.
What we are finding is that staff are working hard, working in difficult conditions, wearing PPE, they are having to work double shifts and on top of that when you add in physical and verbal abuse, it's incredibly rough on staff at the moment
- Simon Smith
"Our staff are going above and beyond and we really want our staff to be respected and not be physically and verbally abused while at work," he said.
"Unfortunately we are subjected to abuse in the emergency department on a regular basis and mostly it is verbal abuse but that can almost be just as cutting to staff in the long term.
"Verbal abuse can have just as much of an effect on staff."
Dr Smith said both physical and verbal abuse was being seen across all levels of the hospital.
"This violence gets to every single person that works at this hospital," he said.
"If you have worked a long clinical shift and if you have been subjected to people yelling and screaming at you, it's incredibly hard to go home and forget about that. It's draining on staff and we are asking them to come back day after day to do their work.
"It's really tough when they are subjected to that verbal and physical abuse."
In 2020, Victorian paramedics recorded 631 occupational violence incidents.
"That's 631 instances, too many," Ambulance Victoria Loddon Mallee area manager Tim Fraser said.
"Ambulance Victoria has no tolerance for occupational violence towards paramedics and we are asking the community to keep our workplace safe, so we can do what we do best which is treat our community and save lives."
Mr Fraser said all assaults towards paramedics are reported to WorkSafe and are forwarded to Victoria Police for investigation.
"We define any occupation abuse as physical, verbal, aggression or assaulting paramedic and we have a zero tolerance for it," he said.
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