Drunken hell for East Lancashire nurses

10:28pm Sunday 18th May 2008

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By Camilla Sutcliffe »

NURSES are being verbally or physically abused everyday by drunken patients at East Lancashire's A&E department, a matron on the unit has revealed.

Clare Clark told of her staff's daily hell as new figures revealed that at least 112 people were attending the Royal Blackburn Hospital with alcohol-related injuries each month, as much as twice the national average.

Mrs Clark, who has 25 years' experience in A&E, said that the abuse which traditionally took place on Friday and Saturday nights had now become a daily occurrence.

And she said that her staff were seeing more young people than ever come through the hospital's doors with serious alcohol problems.

MPs said that the figures and Mrs Clark's experiences showed how society needed to change its attitude towards drinking.

Figures collected from the Healthcare Commission for the Big Drink Debate, a north-west internet study into drinking habits, showed that 112 people each month were attending East Lancashire's A&E with alcohol-related injuries.

This breaks down to 38 Blackburn people, 30 from Burnley and 22 each from Pendle and Rossendale. No figures were available for Hyndburn or the Ribble Valley.

The national average is 20 from a town each month.

Mrs Clark told of the reality behind these figures.

She said: "There are times when the violence and abuse is so bad that we have to call the police.

"But for nurses in the emergency department it's a normal part of the job so unfortunately that means they put up with a lot more than any other public body would before they take that action.

"We have reporting structures in place but there are minor incidents so often that no matter how much we try to persuade them, many nurses just don't bother.

"When I started 25 years ago it was pretty much confined to Friday and Saturday nights, but now we are seeing this kind of thing throughout the week. And we are seeing a lot more chronically alcohol-affected people.

"It used to be just about dealing with drunks, but now we are seeing younger and younger people who have had some serious alcohol problems and related illnesses like liver cirrhosis. Certainly the problem is increasing, both in numbers and in the severity of the presentations."

Mrs Clark told of the difficulties in dealing with a drunk patient.

She said: "At least weekly, we have cases where someone will have a head injury, but we have to wait before we can assess it because they can barely stand because of the alcohol they have drunk, and we don't know whether the reduced consciousness is because of the injury or the drink.

"You get happy drunks and aggressive drunks but the one thing they have in common is that they are non-compliant.

"They either want to fight and argue or give you a big hug and have a dance with you, but either way, it means it takes a lot longer to treat minor injuries than it would with a sober person."

The government will today launch a new £10 million "Know Your Limits" campaign to help people understand how much they are drinking, after studies showed that most vastly underestimated the number of units they consumed.

It follows an initiative in East Lancashire to save a "million years of life" due to health inequalities with alcohol blamed for one in 10 male deaths in the area.

Blackburn MP Jack Straw said new legislation which took effect last Monday gave extra protection to nurses dealing with violent patients.

But he said the root causes of the problem had to be tackled, including cheap alcohol sales in supermarkets and parental control of teenage drinking.

He said: "The truth is that there is a long-standing drink problem across the country. Overall, violence-related injuries are going down and some behaviour, for instance around drink-drinving, has improved dramatically, but people have to realise that alcohol, whilst being an important part of most people's social lives, can be as dangerous as some banned drugs.

"It is very difficult in a free society to investigate what are literally people's personal habits, but it is a big problem that we all have to face."

Burnley MP Kitty Ussher called for efforts to change the social view of drinking, and said people needed to learn that "it is simply not cool to get paralytic."

She said: "It is difficult to interfere with the private sector on prices, but we can do a lot though awareness, and ultimately supermarkets will want a responsible image for their brand.

"Drink-driving has become a social taboo, and drinking beyond your limits needs to be seen like that too, not as something to brag about."