Royal Berkshire NHS Trust: More than 800 attacks on staff in a year
An NHS trust recorded more than 800 physical assaults against its staff last year.
The Royal Berkshire NHS Trust said it did its best to "de-escalate" tensions with aggressive patients.
A nurse at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading told the BBC about being attacked by a patient who tried to stab her. She was not badly injured but underwent counselling.
The government said it was trying to reduce assaults on NHS staff.
Trust papers from this month showed 809 physical assaults against staff were reported to police along with another 925 non-physical assaults.
'Very sad'
One nurse, who did not want to be named, told BBC Radio Berkshire about an incident while she was working at the Reading hospital during the Covid pandemic.
As she recorded her observations of a patient on a staff computer, she felt a sharp pain in her back.
"I must have let out a scream because a lot of my colleagues came running down from outside of the ward to see what was happening," she said.
"I just remember saying something like 'oh my god, what are you doing?' Even now I'm still emotional [talking about it].
"The patient continued to lash out on the ward and they got security. The management came up and I was checked out.
"Thank God I changed my uniform from thin scrubs to one with a double pleat at the back. That is what saved me from having further injury."
Ange Forster, the trust's director of nursing for urgent care, said the attacks made her feel "very sad".
"You never come to work anticipating that you will be unsafe," she added.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "We are working closely with NHS England as they take action to prevent and reduce violence against staff, including through body-worn camera trials and a national violence prevention hub to ensure NHS staff can work in a safe environment."
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