Healthcare workers must be protected

A new university term is upon us, and for at least one day a week up until Christmas I will be in my office on campus and doing some face-to-face teaching for the first time since March 2020! I must tell you that I am excited and apprehensive in equal measure.

For many of you in clinical practice, although you have not stopped face-to-face contact, it has not been the same as it has been previously, and many patients have found the pandemic system confusing and worrying. It has been very distressing to read in the media about attitudes and attacks on our colleagues in primary care. You may have read on social media too about how primary care staff, especially front-line reception staff, have been subject to threats and abuse. This caused many NHS commentators and NHS professionals to be worried about the safety of front-line staff. This came to a head in mid-September when it was revealed there had been an attack on four members of staff in a health centre in greater Manchester resulting in injury. This was widely reported here where I live in the local media outlet, the Manchester Evening News (Wilkinson, 2021), but from what I have been able to see has received less attention in the national press. Two of those staff who were attacked, including a GP, required hospitalisation for head injuries and lacerations. It was revealed that a man was arrested in relation to the attack. This was indeed, to very many, a shocking incident and unconfirmed reports suggest it was prompted by the media attention that primary care needed to re-open and begin seeing patients.