Hospital staff are increasingly becoming victims of abuse, with the latest figures showing there were 1148 assaults against healthcare workers in 2013.
That's up from figures in 2010 and 2011 that showed close to 850 incidents of violence on the wards.
Staff are being punched, spat on, bitten, kicked and verbally abused on a daily basis, according to the data.
Auckland Hospital Emergency Department doctor Tom Mulholland has been one of those victims of abuse. He says often patients who are "off their chops" on drugs such as methamphetamine need to be restrained.
"Nurses really cop it a lot and even in general practice people get abused as well…nurses cop a lot of the flak from angry patients and when the doctor walks in they often settle down because they want to get the treatment," Dr Mulholland told TV3's Paul Henry programme this morning.
"I think the waiting room kind of angst is out there. People want to be seen quicker, everyone wants everything quicker, right? I guess for me that's one of the hardest parts of the job is when you're in the [resuscitation area] or something and you've got a few people who have been in road traffic accidents, or with heart attacks or strokes and you're telling relatives they've died and you go out to see someone in the waiting room and they've been waiting two or three hours for something they could have seen their GP [about] and they've had for six months and they give you an earful because they’ve had to wait."
Dr Mulholland says it can often be difficult to work out whether patients are "acting up" because of head injuries or because of alcohol issues.
"Once we figure out they're acting up then the police are called, and the police are fantastic, they turn up take then away and they either sober up in the cells or go where they need to."
He estimates around 5 percent of patients are problematic.
"Most of them are nice and respectful but there's a certain population that are [problematic] and some of them will never change, some of them are actually psychotic, they have mental illness."
"I think the DHB does a good job in terms of providing security, especially in the major hospitals, in the smaller hospitals you're a lot more vulnerable because it's just you and a nurse some times. But in terms of the law maybe we could prosecute more people; I don’t know what the answer is."
Watch the full interview with Dr Mulholland.
