Doctors’ and nurses’ unions in Italy have urged authorities to consider deploying the army in hospitals following a surge in violent attacks by patients and their families, sparking outrage across the country.
In one recent incident, captured on video and widely circulated on social media, medical staff at the Policlinico hospital in Foggia, Puglia, were forced to barricade themselves in a room. This occurred after about 50 relatives and friends of a 23-year-old woman, who had died following an emergency operation, turned on the doctors and nurses. Several healthcare workers were injured, and bloodstains were visible on the emergency room floor.
Just two days later, another attack occurred at the same hospital, where a patient assaulted three nurses in the emergency room. Then, on Tuesday, a doctor was attacked by a patient at the Francesco Ferrari hospital in Casarano, near Lecce.
Additional physical assaults were reported in the province of Naples, where emergency room doctors were attacked by patients and their families after being asked to wait. In August, a relative of a patient punched a hospital volunteer in Palermo’s Termini Imerese hospital.
Antonio De Palma, president of the Nursing Up union, expressed shock over the rise in violence, stating, “In the past decade, we’ve never documented such an escalation in brutality. The level of danger and aggressiveness is unprecedented. We urgently call on the minister of the interior to address this crisis. Deploying the army in healthcare facilities is now an urgent consideration.”
The National Federation of Orders for Nursing Professions (Fnopi) condemned the “criminal actions” as “intolerable” and called on authorities to ensure healthcare workers’ safety.
Loreto Gesualdo, president of the Italian Federation of Medical-Scientific Societies (Fism), proposed suspending free access to medical care for three years for individuals who assault healthcare workers or damage health facilities.
Fism reported over 16,000 verbal and physical assaults on doctors and nurses in Italian hospitals in 2023 alone.
In a tragic case last year, a 62-year-old man was sentenced to 16 years in prison for murdering a doctor with an axe outside the Policlinico San Donato hospital in Milan, claiming the prescribed treatments were ineffective.
Giuseppe Pasqualone, director of the Policlinico hospital in Foggia, warned that the facility is on the brink of closure. “If this continues, we may have to shut down the emergency department due to a severe shortage of staff,” he said. “The fear among healthcare workers is pushing many to leave, adding to the existing staff crisis.”
Many of the violent incidents are driven by frustration over long wait times and staff shortages. The ANAAO doctors’ union reported that, as of 2022, nearly half of emergency medicine positions remained unfilled. Low salaries and punishing schedules, exacerbated by budget cuts, have led many Italian medical professionals to seek work abroad.
In 2023, Italy faced a shortage of around 30,000 doctors, according to the Forum of Scientific Societies of Hospital and University Clinicians. Between 2010 and 2020, 111 hospitals and 113 emergency rooms were shut down across the country.
