(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
Alcohol-fuelled violence and verbal and physical abuse in Australia's hospital emergency departments is taking its toll on hospital staff and patients.
Its effects are the focus of a new nationwide survey.
Funded by the Australian National Preventative Health Agency, the survey is to be conducted at a range of public hospital emergency departments on Friday and Saturday nights.
It begins as figures were released showing the mental health of Australia's doctors and medical students makes them more likely than the general community to abuse alcohol, suffer depression and become suicidal.
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Imagine a job where being verbally abused is something you could experience several times a day.
That's the lot of staff working in hospital emergency departments across Australia.
Now the extent of the problem is going to be measured in a survey being carried out by the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine.
This study follows a world first survey by mental health group Beyond Blue that found medical students and young or female doctors are most at risk of mental health problems.
The President of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, Doctor Anthony Cross, says staff working in casualty wards can face extremely stressful interactions with alcohol and drug affected patients.
"I'm not whether it's greater or lesser in the emergency department than other areas of medical practice but clearly these issues of violence in the emergency department, often due to drug and alcohol intoxicated patients, certainly puts major psychological stressors on staff working in the emergency departments. It's unpleasant, to say the least, when part of your workplace may involve people who are verbally or physically abusive to you."
Beyond Blue chairman Jeff Kennett says when faced with that sort of stress, medical personnel are vulnerable to turning to hazardous coping strategies.
"A lot of them, as you say, go home at night and have a drink or have two or three drinks. Some start reaching into their cabinets and taking drugs."
A former President of the Australian Medical Association, Doctor Mukesh Haikerwal, knows only too well the mental health risks doctors can face.
He suffered depression after being bashed and robbed.
Dr Haikerwal says Beyond Blue's survey of 14,000 doctors and medical students found one in five medical students and one in ten doctors had suicidal thoughts in the past year, compared with one in 45 people among the general community.
"Anecdotally, I don't think you can talk to a doctor that doesn't know another doctor along the path that hasn't suicided somewhere along the line."
By documenting the extent of alcohol-related harm in emergency departments, Dr Cross hopes that ultimately strategies can be employed to reduce it.
"Clearly the point about this is to get as much information, as much hard data about how big a problem this is and some of the more subtle nuances of the problem: who's it happening to, when and where it's happening, exactly what are the sort of effects that we're seeing as a result of alcohol-related violence. The second thing that we'd then look to do with that is look to implement strategies to minimise alcohol-related violence in the future, whether that's due to ... Predominantly this is going to be public health initiatives to try to provide education or perhaps strategies to eliminate the chance of any form of alcohol-related violence at all."
Dr Cross says he's amazed that medical personnel are able to maintain their professional standards when faced with such extreme provocation to react.
"That temptation is very present, to be honest I'm continuously amazed and in admiration particularly of my nursing colleagues and their ability to put that aside and focus on the fact that there is a sick person in front of them who needs their help and really make that the focus of their concentration. I think that's because they're just good professionals."
