Throughout this week, West Midlands Ambulance Service has been highlighting its concern with the rising trend of violence and abuse against its staff.
The final video releases illustrates just one of the ways WMAS is dealing with the issue.
Conflict Resolution training is now an essential part of staff security aimed at helping frontline staff defuse potentially violent situations. Gerard Ellis from STAND2 said: “These are all essential defensive physical skills that people need in order to keep themselves safe. The ethos of our training quite simply is to avoid situations, but there may be occasions when staff members cannot do that. So they need these essential skills in order to keep themselves safe. That may include emergency control techniques. By definition, it’s a last resort but it may be necessary based on the circumstances.”
All this week, the ‘Under Attack’ campaign has highlighted the problems faced by operational medics, ambulance bosses and trade union leaders who are now calling for tougher sentences for those people who attack and abuse ambulance staff.
The number of ambulance workers being attacked, verbally abused or threatened while doing their job continues to be a ‘real concern’ with over 200 cases reported last year.
Watch the final video presentations published today at: www.officialwmas.wordpress.com. Catch up by watching all the releases this week. You can also follow the progress of the campaign on Twitter and Facebook at:@officialwmas.
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