A growing number of doctors are resorting to self-defence classes to protect themselves against attacks at work, a report claimed today.
GPs across Northern Ireland have signed up for lessons from martial arts expert Mr Jim McCausland after a series of attacks on doctors in their surgeries and on home visits.
BMA News, the magazine of the British Medical Association (BMA), said even more doctors were planning to enroll in courses because of the violence they faced in the workplace.
One of those on the course, Co Tyrone doctor Sandra Elliott, signed up after being assaulted by two youths, one wielding a baseball bat, in October last year.
Dr Elliott was left traumatised by the assault, outside and out-of-hours centre in Craigavon, Co Armagh, in the early hours of the morning and was unable to return to work for several days. "The level of depravity of our society has forced me to take action," she said. "You have to do something yourself. It seems nobody else will do it."
Dr Elliott said it was "very sad" that doctors had to go to these lengths but believed it was getting to a stage where doctors would need police escorts to go to some parts of the North.
Assembly member Dr Alasdair McDonnell, a GP in Belfast for 25 years, said he had never known there to be so much violence targeted at GPs.
PA