Desperate Measures

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Italy moved to deploy its army to guard hospital staff in Calabria and elsewhere after escalating violence by patients and their family members across Italy has left dozens of doctors, nurses and other medical staff injured, Euro Weekly News reported.

One well-known incident captured on video saw doctors and nurses forced to barricade themselves in a room at the Policlinico hospital in Foggia, in the southern region of Puglia, in early September after about 50 enraged relatives and friends of a 23-year-old woman who died after an emergency operation turned on medical staff, the Guardian reported.

Some healthcare workers were injured, with bloodstains visible on the emergency room floor.

Two days later, the same hospital reported another attack, with a patient kicking and punching three emergency room nurses, according to Italian newswire ANSA. Then on Tuesday, also in Puglia, a patient assaulted a doctor at the Francesco Ferrari hospital in Casarano.

After the recorded Foggia attack, the hospital threatened to shut the emergency room, the Associated Press noted.

“We have never seen such levels of aggression in the past decade,” Antonio De Palma, president of the Nursing Up union, told the AP. “We are now at a point where considering military protection in hospitals is no longer a far-fetched idea. We cannot wait any longer.”

In Italy, there had been 16,000 reported cases of physical and verbal assaults on medical staff by patients and their relatives in 2023, the latest figures available.

While these attacks have been occurring throughout the entire country, the frequency of the attacks has been higher in southern Italy, leading the doctors’ guild to request the army be sent to protect staff.

The reasons behind the attacks have been attributed to understaffing at hospitals and clinics, and long wait times for procedures that result in frustration for patients and their relatives.

At the same time, Italy’s salary cap legislation has kept wages low and nearly half of clinical posts in emergency medicine have remained unfilled as of 2022. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic worsened the staffing crisis, with many health professionals emigrating for opportunities abroad. As a result, Italy is short of around 30,000 doctors.