Violence is an occupational hazard for Scotland�s healthcare workers. Every day they are exposed to threats, intimidation and assaults.

Violence is an occupational hazard for Scotland's healthcare workers. Every day they are exposed to threats, intimidation and assaults.

Seldom are these incidents as serious as the attack on a well-known and well-liked GP in her Glasgow surgery yesterday.

Dr Helen Jackson is recovering in hospital and the indications are that she will make a full recovery. Nevertheless, hers has been a close escape.

No-one could have predicted such a highly-respected doctor in one of Glasgow's most genteel neighbourhoods would be subjected to such a serious assault in her own consultation room from a man reported to be one of her own patients.

Yet for GPs, practice nurses and receptionists the threat of violence always lurks in the background.

"It is not possible to completely protect GPs because we are open to the public, anyone can come in and sit down with a doctor on a one-to-one basis", said Dr Alan McDevitt, who works as a GP in Clydebank and is secretary of the Glasgow GPs' Committee.

"That is just the way it is, and all we can do is try to minimise risk. The incidence of threatening behaviour and aggression in surgeries is common, but thankfully actual violence is not.

"Nevertheless, when it does happen it is very traumatising. We have not had such a serious incident as the assault on Dr Jackson for some time. The last really serious incident I can recall is when a colleague of mine was held at knifepoint in the health centre and had to be rescued by the police, but thankfully he wasn't injured.

"However, there is a fair amount of threatening behaviour of the type which stops short of that which requires police involvement, but which nonetheless can be very intimidating for staff."

Dr McDevitt said GPs face the risks knowing the overwhelming majority of people are supportive of them.

He said: "We rely on the goodwill of the public towards our profession for protection."

He and his colleagues would like to see the terms of the Emergency Workers Act, which came into force in 2005, extended to cover people working in GPs' surgeries.

As is stands the legislation only makes the assault of police, ambulance and emergency medical staff an aggravated offence. It covers medical staff working in a hospital, but not in the community.

This is despite a report last year which claimed more than a third of Scottish GPs reported some form of violence in the workplace over the course of the preceding year.

Dr Jackson's practice is in one of the most affluent and middle class areas of Glasgow where violence is rare.

She and her brother Paul enjoy a good reputation among their patients and fellow professionals. Her brother is a sports injuries specialist who carries out private work for Rangers Football Club and is a veteran of the medical team which oversees the T in the Park music festival.

Dr Jackson, who lives in the west end of Glasgow has been a GP for 28 years and has been an outspoken critic of government health policy.

Six years ago she spoke out over problems in the NHS and said she had planned early retirement. She commented in a newspaper article which reported claims doctors felt that politicians had deliberately fuelled public distrust of doctors to deflect criticism away from the funding and stewardship of the NHS.

She said at the time: "Politicians have been very divisive to the medical profession. They want GPs to fall out with hospital staff."

She went as far as dissuading doctors from going into general practice: "I would only advise someone to become a GP now if they had extreme enthusiasm and didn't expect to have a social life."

When the Emergency Workers Act was being drawn up the British Medical Association asked that GPs be given the same protection as doctors and nurses in hospitals.

Dr Dean Marshall, chairman of the BMA's Scottish GPs' Committee, said: "We pointed out that GPs and community nurses would be excluded from the terms of the act which allows the courts to give harsher sentences to those who attack emergency workers.

"If I get attacked when I'm in a hospital I am covered. If it happens in my surgery I am not, and that seems to be completely unacceptable to us that this distinction is made."

Dr Kate Pickering, a GP at the Northcote Surgery less than half-a-mile from Dr Jackson's surgery, said she did not believe that female GPs were at any particular risk.

She said: "I don't think it matters whether you are a man or a woman - all doctors irrespective of sex are at risk."

A history of violence in our practices
2006 A female patient burst into a surgery in Blackpool and stabbed a doctor.

• 2005 The Springwell Medical Centre in Gorgie, Edinburgh, was evacuated and armed police called in after a patient in a consulting room became agitated and showed the GP a handgun in his bag.

• 1999 Dr Michael Tiley was repeatedly stabbed by the husband of one of his patients. He was saved by a colleague at his surgery in Carnwath, Lanarkshire, who drained blood and fluid from his lungs.

• 1994 Dr Donald Mackay, 56, died after being stabbed in the throat at his Lanarkshire practice by a man whose sister had died eight years earlier from cervical cancer. The man blamed the doctor for wrongly diagnosing his sister's illness.