Ala Marta (fictitious name of a health worker who prefers to remain anonymous) makes him afraid to go to his workplace. There is no shortage of reasons. He works at CAP Piera, the primary care center in Catalonia where more assaults on professionals have been reported in the last three years. Specifically, 30 (three very serious, 16 serious and 11 mild). Two of the three classified as very serious were physical assaults. For this reason, last February 22 there was a trade union rally in front of the center to demand the hiring of a security guard by Salut.
She has experienced some aggression in her own skin and has witnessed others where her colleagues were the victims. “Personally, I have received insults and some violent action (shouting, slamming doors, throwing some object on the floor…), and more than once”. He explains that on one occasion he saw a person take a computer screen from the information desk, throw it at several workers and then grab a pair of scissors to try to stab them at the professional who went intercede to stop it.
He regrets that violent episodes are frequent. “Sometimes it is not the patients who attack (either physically or verbally), but their companions”. He says that they even have “a panic button” on each PC and that when someone presses it, an alarm goes off on all the computers in the center. “At that moment, our colleagues come to put pressure on us so that things don’t escalate.”
Faced with this scenario, it is not surprising that he claims that the center’s professionals are “afraid” to go to work. “Especially at night, which is when there are fewer staff.”
He assures that in the last ten years the aggressions have increased, especially after the pandemic. And not only in its center. “There are several CAPs that in the last year (from January 1, 2023 to January 31, 2024) had more assaults than that of Piera”, sources from the ICS personnel board explain to La Vanguardia of Central Catalonia. According to figures provided by these sources, 24 assaults (one physical) were reported to the EAP (primary care team) in Manresa; the one in Vic Nord, 23 (one for physics); at the ACUT (continuous and urgent care) Bages-Berguedà, 18 (three physicals); 14 were registered in the EAP Manresa 4; that of Capellades, 12, and that of Santa Margarida de Montbui, 11.
Marta asserts that the aggressors are more daring with them. “We are the ones who suffer the most from violent actions.” The data from the latest National Observatory of Assaults on Doctors from 2023 prove him right. Two out of three doctors assaulted in the course of their work were women, who, in addition, received 70% of the insults and harassment, 65% of the threats, 58% of the physical injuries and the 75% of harassment cases, a gender gap that has increased year after year since 2016.
What explains this phenomenon at CAP Piera? It is important to take into account the socio-economic environment, says Marta. “Piera has a part of society that suffers from significant socio-economic deprivation. In addition, there is a fairly high rate of addiction and consumption of legal and illegal narcotics. This cocktail causes violent actions to grow.” There is also the variable of the lack of doctors. “The fact that there is no continuity of care is one of the reasons why there are more assaults”, point out the staff board of the ICS. “Patients get angry when they see that they don’t have an assigned doctor and they always have to go to the emergency room, so they don’t have a follow-up,” they add.
To curb the number of assaults, the center is calling on Health to hire a security guard. It would not be the first CAP that has this figure. At the time, and as explained by the ICS staff board, they already managed to implement it in two centers: at CAP Bages de Manresa and at Osona de Vic. In the first there is surveillance from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and on weekends and holidays for 24 hours, while in the second, at night.
