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Some 75% of workers in emergency medical departments and services have witnessed violence in the past year, according to a survey of more than 1,300 health care professionals in 81 countries.

At the European Emergency Medicine Congress, Luis Garcia Castrillo, a retired professor of emergency medicine at Hospital Marqués de Valdecilla in Santander, Spain, said patients and their friends or relatives were the main perpetrators, often because of alcohol or drug use. Overcrowding in emergency medical departments was an equally important contributor to the violence, he said.

"Workplace violence not only jeopardizes the physical and mental health of health care professionals but also negatively impacts the quality of care they provide," Castrillo said. "The survey reveals that 45.8% of respondents thought that the quality of care was diminished as a result of the violence they encountered."

The international online survey, conducted by the EUSEM Emergency Medicine Day Working Group, received responses from 1,306 health care providers in 81 countries between May and June 2026. A paper was published in the European Journal of Emergency Medicine (EJEM) at the same time it was presented to the congress.

It found that 75.5% of respondents had witnessed violence in their workplaces in the previous year, 68.8% had experienced psychological harm and 40.3% had experienced physical harm.

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