European Medical Organisations face an increase in all types of acts of physical, emotional, and psychological violence against healthcare professionals.
PRESS RELEASE
In 2021 the World Health Organisation celebrates the International Year of Health and Care Workers. Despite this, European Medical Organisations face an increase in all types of acts of physical, emotional, and psychological violence against healthcare professionals. This is confirmed in the alarming finding of the FEMS survey about burnout of physicians in Europe. European Medical Organisations reaffirm that they stand in complete solidarity with their colleagues who are in the front line of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
European Medical Organisations strongly urge governments to reconsider how healthcare systems value the wellbeing of healthcare professionals in their daily practice together along with the wellbeing of the patients they serve every day and the community of employees who work with them. Medicine should be, and must remain, a safe place to work.
The ongoing pandemic has reaffirmed the central role of physicians in ensuring the stability and wellbeing of our societies. On the 12th of March of this year, European Medical Organisations marked the second European Awareness Day on Violence against Doctors and other Healthcare Professionals and committed themselves to acknowledging and addressing those factors contributing to violence against doctors including exhaustion and burnout.
We call on European governments and health authorities, to provide all healthcare staff with a safe working environment and adequate mechanisms to prevent any type of violence so as to decrease the risk of exhaustion and burnout for all healthcare professionals, and to deploy all necessary means to protect the physical and psychological integrity of our colleagues during this pandemic and beyond.
These healthcare professionals, whom we applaud, deserve admiration, respect, appreciation, and protection. European Medical Organisations also pay tribute to all healthcare professionals who sadly lost their lives in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Find the full press release here: European Medical Organisations face an increase in all types of acts of physical, emotional, and psychological violence against healthcare professionals.
