The International Labour Organization ranked medical professions as the second most vulnerable to violence in the workplace. This view is supported by the consortium’s pre-project research which saw a questionnaire disseminated to key stakeholders and
received over 1000 responses. Results showed that only 5.9% respondents with previous patient contact said that they had never been verbally assaulted by patients and 62.5% were victims of physical assault by patients at least once.
The chief goal of the "SAFEMEDIC" project is to improve the workplace safety of healthcare professionals by increasing their skills and competences in dealing with difficult situations. To achieve this the project consortium designed and developed a complex multi-stakeholder, inter-disciplinary course for healthcare students, predominantly focused at paramedics and nurses. The didactic materials and project’s intellectual outputs are also accessible to the rest of the health workforce such as physicians and physiotherapists.