Nurses speak out against rising tide of abuse

Two nurses have said the abuse they are facing from patients, which has included shouting and having objects thrown at them, is getting worse.

Washington community nurses Shannon Malloy and Lydia Taylor said verbal attacks from patients had "massively" increased in the last five years.

Taylor said the issue had become so bad she sometimes dreaded going into work and had considered leaving nursing. She said she feared the abuse experienced by staff would only continue to worsen.

South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust (STSFT) said it had set up a dedicated team to address the increasing levels of abuse its staff faced.

A rise in abuse against healthcare staff has been seen across the country.

In July, the Department of Health and Social Care said reports of the percentage of NHS staff experiencing violence at work had risen for the second consecutive year.

STSFT said it recorded 2,341 security incidents between April 2025 and March 2026.

Of these, 885 involved verbal abuse against staff while 530 involved physical attacks – a rise of 14% and 2% respectively compared with the previous year.

But the pair, whose work involves going into people's homes, said they believed the figures were an underestimate.

"It's just been normalised that you're going to expect abuse when you work for the NHS," said Malloy. "I think people just see you as a nurse and I don't think they actually see the person behind the uniform."

She said she regularly experienced patients shouting and being aggressive.

Taylor said patient abuse used to be "quite rare" when she started in 2019. But since then, she felt patients had become more demanding.

"Patients have become more dictating of the treatment options that they want," she said. "And if you don't do what they want, they can kind of become verbal."

She said working with particularly difficult patients could inspire dread.

One had once thrown a glass at her, she said, adding: "You do get scared."

She also said she struggled to talk to her family about the realities of the job.

"They think, oh, she goes to work and saves lives," she said, but "there's so much to it".

The pair said they were speaking out because they wanted things to change.

"I think the longer somebody doesn't speak up about it, the longer it happens," said Taylor.

The trust's executive planning and business development director Vicky Mitchell said the organisation regularly worked with two Northumbria Police liaison officers, had hired more security and had also introduced staff debrief sessions following particularly serious cases of abuse.

Mitchell said it was key staff felt able to report abuse so the trust knew the scale of the issue it was facing.

"My job is to make staff feel as safe as possible," she said.

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