DRUG FIGHT IS MORE THAN SELF-DEFENCE

QUEENSLAND Health and the State Government are setting out to be seen
as responsible employers by putting hospital staff through
self-defence lessons to equip them to handle violent patients.

Gold Coasters might well raise an eyebrow at the need for such
training.

Obnoxious drunks with bloodied noses have been a regular sight in
emergency departments since hospitals were introduced and usually --
but not always -- have been pulled into line by the sharp tongue of a
nursing sister.

So what has changed to prompt Queensland Health to send hospital
workers off to a self-defence academy to learn how to try to calm
violent patients and, if all else fails, to use force to restrain them?

As a Gold Coast Bulletin report revealed on Saturday, violence at the
Gold Coast Hospital is not new, with a disturbing litany of attacks on
staff by patients, including the death of an experienced nurse in 2005
who had been kicked in the chest by a patient. And last year, the
hospital's psychiatric nursing staff threatened to walk off the job,
citing fear for their lives due to understaffing and bed shortages in
the mental health unit.

The healthcare landscape has been changed dramatically by illegal
drugs, particularly amphetamines including the drug ice, which are
commonly linked with often unexplained violent and anti-social
behaviour. Our courts and the wards of hospitals are littered with the
tragic consequences of this drug scourge, as are the state's cemeteries.

Drunks might sober up relatively quickly, but ice users caught in a
living nightmare of drug psychosis are a different story. Training
hospital staff to attempt to talk around a drug-crazed maniac and to
flatten him in a team tackle if he cannot be subdued by eloquent
reasoning might seem a fine idea and a necessary step in workplace
health and safety, but reality does not always conform to bureaucratic
policy and wishful thinking.

Health professionals know that an out-of-control psychiatric patient
can have, to use a cliche, the strength of 10 men.

The number of security guards at our public hospital was boosted last
year.

So what message does training staff for violent encounters
send?

Given the situation hospitals now contend with, we do agree doctors,
nurses, ward staff and administrators should have the training to
defend themselves, but arming staff with negotiation, psychology and
martial arts skills is just one more step backward; another battle
lost in the war on drugs.

As well as diverting health funds away from priority health matters
and into security guards, our taxes are now being used for
self-defence lessons for a group of professionals who should not have
to look over their shoulders to ensure their own safety while
attempting to cure the sick and injured.

Meanwhile the gangs that produce and distribute the drugs that cause
so much misery continue to profit. They could not care less about
ruined lives, violent robberies, heartbreak and a struggling health
system.

Like fatal road accidents, the terrible statistics of death and broken
minds caused by drugs are accepted with a shrug by the public until a
family member or friend succumbs to an overdose that kills or one
tablet too many that scrambles a brain.

Then the drug cancer hits home, but only to the small circle directly
affected.

Pour more money into the drug war, by all means, but direct it into
overturning the rocks the drug vermin -- the drug producers, the bikie
gangs, the so-called respectable business people who bankroll drug
schemes -- hide under.