Nurse treated for broken wrist after alleged assault in Sydney hospital

A nurse and a doctor at Concord Hospital in Sydney's inner west have been treated for injuries after allegedly being attacked by a patient.

Police said a 44-year-old female patient was restrained and sedated, after allegedly assaulting the two women, aged 34 and 57, on Tuesday morning.

Health Minister Ryan Park said both women required medical treatment, one for a broken wrist.

The attack came a day before the NSW government announced a boost in security staff at 27 hospitals across the state.

One hospital staff member, who began their shift shortly after the alleged assault, said colleagues told them the woman shoved a nurse manager in the chest, causing her to fall backwards and sustain multiple wrist fractures.

They said the second woman, a junior doctor, suffered a cut to her head after being pushed over and hitting the edge of a table.

The staff member said assaults against hospital staff by acute mental health patients were an "almost daily" occurrence at Concord, and had created a "mutinous feeling" among some emergency department staff.

In an email sent to staff, hospital management described it as a "serious incident" and said the staff members had been "injured by a mental health consumer".

The email said one of the staff members requires some time off work to recover from their injuries.

Management said a "number of violence prevention initiatives" were in place at the hospital.

"It is deeply disappointing that these measures were not yet able to protect our team," the email read.

Guard backs boost to security

Bruce Rowling is a security guard at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital and says he has been injured on the job "many a time".

The worst of those injuries was his thumb pulled out of its socket, ripping his tendons.

He said he was restraining a male patient who had been told by a doctor he was moving to another hospital.

"He didn't like that, he just went a bit crazy, started swinging and punching the doctor,"

Mr Rowling said.

Before the patient could be sedated, Mr Rowling held him down.

"In the process of me holding him, my thumb was pulled out of its socket," he said.

Mr Rowling said in a big hospital with about 650 beds, there were usually four security staff working at a time.

He said a general rule was one security guard for every 100 people, but that number was not achievable once visitors and hospital staff were taken into account.

At a media conference with the health minister, he backed government plans to boost security staff at hospitals.

The state government has committed to recruiting 129 extra full-time security staff to reduce gaps in security ratios in New South Wales hospitals.

Bigger hospitals with high-volume emergency departments see the most violent incidents, including Westmead Hospital, Prince of Wales Hospital and Royal North Shore Hospital.

Mr Park said the additional security staff would be deployed at 27 hospitals across the state.

"The ability for them to handle challenging patients, challenging visitors, challenging people who are coming into our hospitals is far easier when they feel supporter by additional staff," he said.

Health Services Union secretary Gerard Hayes said the additional staff would help prevent violent incidents before they happened.

"We will now be in a position to prevent issues occurring as opposed to responding to them, which is the most important thing," he said.

Mr Hayes described a hospital as a "microcosm of the community".

"And we're seeing the community now under pressure, we're seeing the community also becoming more anxious," he said.

'Drug of choice' increasing violence

Mr Park said changes in drug use had contributed to an increase in violence in emergency departments.

"Back 20 years ago, the drug of choice, heroin at the time, had a different effect on the body than what the types of drugs that we see now, particularly methamphetamine," he said.

Mr Park said people using methamphetamines presenting at hospitals could bring some "pretty frightening issues" for staff and security officers, requiring extra resources.

"We're working very closely with police about the way in which we interact with those patients when they come into our hospital settings," he said.

Calls for extra powers

Mr Rowling said ongoing underworld crime in Sydney had also been a concern for hospital security.

"They end up in hospital, you have their friends and relatives turning up and they don't always like each other," he said.

He said when police do not have capacity to watch patients in hospital, security guards "take up that slack".

"Everything you see out on the street happens in hospitals as well, but you have a thousand people in a big building,"

he said.

While security guards receive training, they do not have any "extra powers than the average citizen", Mr Rowling said.

"We can ask someone to leave if they're misbehaving problem is you can't do that to everyone who's a patient because they might be a critical patient," he said.

Mr Park said the government had "not made a decision" about increasing powers available to hospital security guards.

"Additional powers comes with other challenges, but we are working through those," he said.