As many as 89 percent of emergency room medical personnel have been threatened at work and 99 percent said they have either witnessed or heard of colleagues being threatened on the job, according to a survey commissioned by the Formosan Medical Association Director-General Chen Wei-kung (
The survey also said that 73 percent of nurses have been threatened at work and 36 percent have actually been physically attacked at work.
Chen distributed a questionnaire he designed to hospital emergency rooms across the country in late June.
Of the 366 questionnaires returned, 122 were completed by doctors and 244 were completed by nurses.
Chen said that the two most common sources of violent behavior were disputes involving patients and their families, or gangsters.
"This is what disturbs these medical professionals the most," Chen said.
Doctors said that some patients would check in for emergency treatment of acute pain and would ask for a dose of painkillers to deal with the pain quickly.
"The problem is that not every symptom can be treated with just painkillers," Chen said.
Doctors also said that some patients get upset and abusive when they see medical staff leave them to attend to other patients.
There were also cases where gangsters threatened medical personnel not to treat their adversaries, she said.
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