A leading consultant says cocaine-fuelled assaults on HSE staff have increased dramatically over the past decade.
It’s after new figures show there were over 7,500 assaults on healthcare workers last year.
5,800 were physical, 41 were sexual and the rest were verbal attacks.
Professor Bill Tormey, a consultant in Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, says the increasing use of cocaine is a factor.
He says that ‘it’s across every social class’, and that the issue is no longer alcohol.
While all emergency room workers seem to be targets for these attacks it is nurses who seem to be targeted the most says Tormey.
