THE NUMBER of times Police have been called to the South West Acute Hospital Emergency Department within the last three years has been revealed.
A Freedom of Information request by this newspaper sought details on the number of times Police were called to incidents of violence at the local Emergency Department.
A response to this query shows that 11 incidents were recorded by the Trust where Police were called to the Emergency Department at SWAH during the three financial years 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2019/20.
In the response the Trust went on to highlight “these recorded incidents would not reflect accurately the number of times police have been called to the hospital site as not all PSNI calls to attend the Emergency Department warrant the reporting of an incident”.
Councillor Victor Warrington described any incidents where Police need to be called to hospitals as “disappointing”.
Cllr Warrington said, “At the end of the day we don’t want any incidents against nursing staff or doctors at A&E departments. Any incidents against staff are despicable. Those people are now more so than ever putting themselves on the line to help members of the public coming in with the likes of a broken leg or head injury etc. For patients to get aggressive perhaps mostly due to alcohol is certainly worrying and we would love to see a zero rate.
“Zero tolerance has to be to the fore but if people do misbehave Police need to be called and they need to suffer the consequences.”
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