'I'm a nurse in A&E and don't feel safe anymore - staff are quitting over frightening violence'

'I'm a nurse in A&E and don't feel safe anymore - staff are quitting over frightening violence' The horrifying violence faced by NHS staff is laid bare by an A&E sister who has seen her colleague get a broken jaw and nurses chased with knives An A&E sister at one of the UK’s most respected hospitals says staff “do not feel safe any more” and are leaving the career they once loved. Jess Turnbull, 35, a senior A&E sister at St Thomas’ Hospital in Waterloo, London, said her colleagues have been beaten, threatened and chased with knives. One ‘gentle’ member of staff had their jaw broken in a catalogue of horrifying violence Jess and her colleagues have witnessed and endured in recent years. The sister was reacting to a shocking new report from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) which shows A&E staff are facing violence or aggression on a daily or weekly basis, with some workers kicked and others racially abused. The RCEM are now calling for the Government to take “immediate action” after quizzing 2,126 staff in emergency departments. They found 96% have experienced violence or aggression from patients or other members of the public. And some 73% said this happened weekly or even daily. Two thirds said the incidents involved discrimination against them. Jess has seen it all during her ten years working for the NHS and told The Mirror: “I’ve been a nurse for 10 years and I’ve been in A&E for nine years. It’s definitely worse than it’s ever been. It’s a big change from when I started. “Everyone is quite worn down by the violence, threats and verbal abuse. It doesn’t feel safe any more, especially in A&E. People leave all the time and that’s one of the reasons for sure. “I’ve been punched, scratched and kicked. There's been broken bones. We had a couple of nurses chased just outside the doors of A&E with a man with the blade. “Everything can be used as a weapon; fire extinguishers, furniture. Just last week a chair was thrown at one of my colleagues. Another time a fire extinguisher was sprayed over a colleague of mine. “I think everyone is upset by it and if you talk to anyone about it they are very passionate. Everyone has a story. “ Things have become so bad her bosses at Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust launched their own campaign to raise awareness in July, after seeing a 60 percent increase in physical assaults on their staff year-on-year. From 418 reported cases in 2024/25, these have risen to 669 in 2025/26. This is nearly two incidents of physical abuse against staff daily. Jess says one of the most disturbing incidents was a staff member who had their jaw broken: “That was a really bad one. The member of staff is such a lovely, gentle person - not that anyone deserves to be hurt - but they would be wonderful at calming every situation down, it was quite out of the blue and frightening, a lot of people witnessed it and got upset. It feels like no one is really safe. “We also have computers thrown off desks, which is expensive equipment and that is frustrating when there is not a lot of money going round.” Even phones are being used as a weapon to "intimidate" NHS workers. “One of the newer things that happens is the use of phones to video us, this is stressful too. "It is done to intimidate us. The thought of being put on someone’s live stream is worrying and there’s always the fear they could take a clip out of context.” Jess says she would like to see “more support from the justice system and people knowing that attacks on NHS workers are taken seriously". "I don’t think they think there will be repercussions at the moment,” she said. She said staff get a “very high number of incidents” at the front door of A&E where patients are triaged despite the efforts of her Trust. Like all hospitals nationwide patients face long waiting times. Recent research by the British Medical Journal found hundreds of thousands of NHS patients are spending more than 24 hours in A&E - with more than 13,000 waiting at least three days. Jess says: “People do arrive understandably stressed and they are not sure what is going on. But that's where we receive so much abuse. You can feel exposed there, even though our trust has put added security out there now. “I struggle when someone has threatened me to just move onto the next person straight away which you have to do despite your heart racing away. “We get a lot of verbal abuse too. I get some reprieve from the firing line when I teach but you get ‘threats of violence, a lot of anger and a lot of blaming the system on you. ‘It’s your fault I am not being seen quickly’. “People make racist comments, sexualised comments too. It feels like people just think of the nastiest thing they can say when they are very angry. “Then they threaten violence when you leave, which is the most worrying. I always find it quite horrible when somebody's threatening to be violent towards you, especially when they say something like 'I'm going to get you after work'. “Every member of staff has to think about their placements in work. When I started in A&E I didn’t need to think that. You are taught where to position yourself in a cubicle to ensure you have an exit available. We have pinpoint alarms, which we can pull and security come to that area to help. They go off multiple times a day at the moment.” Crystal Akass, Chief People Officer at Guy’s and St Thomas’, said: “The vast majority of our patients and visitors are respectful to colleagues here at the Trust, but even isolated incidents of aggression can have a lasting effect on individuals and teams.” They said they started their campaign to draw “attention to how we want all our colleagues to be treated - every one of whom has a right to feel safe and protected in their workplace."