Health workers condemn ‘phenomenon’ of attacks on staff, demand protective measures

AMMAN — Jordan Nurses and Midwives Association (JNMA) on Saturday condemned the recent alleged physical assault on four nurses at Al Bashir Hospital, describing the incident as a “barbaric” way of dealing with the medical cadres, according to a JNMA statement.

“Attacking medical staff is becoming a phenomenon, not just one or two cases that we rarely witness,” Khaled Rababaah, JNMA’s president, said in the statement, calling for “all health syndicates to take a unified stand to fight this phenomenon through calling for legislative measures that protect the medical providers”.

“It might be even necessary for the Ministry of Interior to interfere by ensuring that there is a security unit inside each hospital,” he told The Jordan Times. 

Several news websites on Friday reported that four nurses had allegedly been beaten up by visitors of one of the patients, who got angry after being told that visits were not allowed at that time.

The Kingdom’s two other health syndicates, the Jordan Medical Association (JMA) and the Jordan Pharmacists Association (JPhA), have recently announced that they will take “escalating measures” if their demands are not met, one of which requires setting regulations and legislation that protect doctors against violence.

In a recent statement, JMA said that none of their demands had been met despite having been under discussion over the past two years. These included improving doctors’ income and work environment, applying amendments to the association’s laws, and increasing the employment rates of doctors.

A source at Al Bashir Hospital told The Jordan Times that two incidents took place in the same day where four nurses, three males and one female, were allegedly beaten, while another male nurse was attacked later in the day.

Victims are suffering from various symptoms following the attack such as bruises, contusions, dizziness, and concussion, adding that one of the victims is suffering from retinal hemorrhages.

The Health Ministry reiterated its “strongest rejection” to any physical or verbal assault on medical staff. 

“We do not accept any justification to such violent acts. The patients and their families can report their complaints to officials through the various media channel available, but violence should never be an option,” Health Ministry Spokesperson Hatem Azrui told The Jordan Times.

Azrui said that the Health Ministry filed a complaint against the perpetrators and reported the issue to all concerned authorities to ensure that victims will claim their rights. 

According to official statistics, 56 cases of attacks on medical cadres were registered in 2017, and 21 cases in the first quarter of 2018. 

A nurse at a public hospital, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the sector is witnessing similar attacks nearly every day, but the official statistics do not show that because most cases are not registered as the victims are “forced to rescind”.

He explained that in all previous cases, assaulted cadres file a personal complaint, not a complaint from the institution itself, which creates “an easy exit” for perpetrators if they have a “good go-between person” to solve the problem.

“Doctors and nurses are keen on ensuring a good reputation, so the absence of an institutional intervention makes them less likely to file a complaint themselves, as they fear to have a ‘black dot’ on their record,” the nurse continued, adding that “filing the complaint by the hospital itself and the intervention of the ministry was the right step to take in order to deter people from committing violations against medical providers”. 

For Zuhair Musallam, JNMA deputy secretary-treasurer, “the patients’ relatives should be aware that managing the visit times serves the patients in the first place as it ensures their privacy, and is not a way to prevent families from seeing their loved ones”.  Hussein Khuzai, professor of sociology at the University of Jordan said the reason behind such acts is “the lack of appreciation of the psychological and physical pressure care providers face in their job”. 

“People tend to use violence as the easiest tool if their demands are not met,” he said, stressing that “aggravating the punishment alone is not enough. There should be more social awareness among people to respect medical providers”.