It’s a sad state of affairs that action has to be taken to protect those who we expect to protest us.
And from next year a pilot scheme will be in place which will now see hospital workers wearing body cameras.
In truth, it has been coming for some time. And yes, safety must come first.
Those who work in our hospitals are there to help us when we need help most.
Instead, they have been targets for attack, they walk into work past drug dealers openly plying their trade in accident and emergency units and have to clean toilets where needles have been discarded. And the number of incidents has been on the rise. Something needed to be done. They deserve to feel safe in their employment.
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Hospitals are difficult places to work in at the best of times. They should not be seen as places where drug dealers can peddle their wares.
For patients too hospitals need to be safe spaces where they can get the care and treatment they need free from any outside threats, anti-social behaviour, fights over drug debts and without staff watching over their shoulder for incidents rather than concentrating on the job in hand.
Body cameras, which will be piloted in Belfast Trust hospitals in the middle of next year, will not eradicate the problem. It’s a society issue which has spilled into the areas where least resistance will be found.
But it has reached a stage where any means of deterrent has to be considered.
When a meeting of the policing board is being told the drugs problem at hospital locations “seems to be snowballing into being in multiple hospitals” and right across different wards and areas “in the midst of some of the most vulnerable people in our society,” then this will surely only be the start of an active plan to safeguard those who work to save lives and help us at our most vulnerable.
At least those who may think they can get away with whatever they want in a hospital corridor might think twice if evidence is always being collected against them. They will go elsewhere, of course, but that’s something society as a whole needs to deal with.
Those who care for the ill need to be free from the distractions the anti-social behaviour is increasingly creating. Patients need to be free from witnessing the incidents they have been when all they want is professional and focused help.
We can only hope the trial camera scheme acts as a deterrent and helps bring some much-needed order to what are extremely stressful places to work.
If criminals are caught and stopped, all the better.