A shooting at a Sydney hospital highlights the critical need to beef up powers for security guards, the Health Services Union says.
HSU secretary Gerard Hayes said the shooting of a policeman and security guard during a scuffle with a man wielding scissors shows the need for stronger protections.
"We've been saying for some time (we need) to have the power to be able to restrain and detain people," he told reporters outside western Sydney's Nepean Hospital.
"It is a crazy situation we have been advocating for many years."
Mr Hayes said security guards must also be able to carry handcuffs or material restraints.
"We see now with ice and alcohol-fuelled violence emergency departments are becoming more and more like battlegrounds than actually areas of care," he said.
"We are now calling on the minister to get involved, to ensure that community expectations and community standards will be maintained in an emergency department in a hospital.
"We do not need communities to be able to come to their hospital as visitors and then become patients."
NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner has agreed to meet with the HSU next week.
"I expect this meeting will take place at the NSW Ministry of Health next week, with the Secretary of Health Dr Mary Foley also in attendance," Ms Skinner said in a statement to AAP.
"The security and welfare of staff and patients in our hospitals is always paramount," she said.
