Dreadful Incident at Paphos General Hospital

[MacManiac]

My wife and I were at Paphos General yesterday so that she could see her neurologist. Appointments were running late (mainly because the neurologist takes as much time as necessary with each patient). My wife was called and a young Cypriots man exploded with rage. He was shouting and tried to push past my wife into the consulting room. Tempers were fraying and he also pushed the female doctor. Other male doctors came to her aid and my wife needed me in the consulting room. She was shaking and frightened, and worried the man would try to force his way into the room again.

The noise and the row continued - even after the neurologist returned. She apologised and it was obvious she was shaken up. The shouting increased, and it was impossible to concentrate. God alone knows what the mainly elderly people in the waiting area were feeling. The last time I was in a physical altercation with anyone was in 1971 in Belfast, when I thumped a suspected terrorist who was attempting to stab a young soldier in my platoon. I came mighty close to doing that yesterday.

There appears to be no security at the hospital but I have seen a policeman sitting outside the Emergency department. I have seen this sort of behaviour in the UK but never here.

[trevnhil]

Certainly, I have been to various Paphos outpatient departments where violent arguing has broken out.
That and the endless queueing when you have an appointment time is one of the reasons that I only go to one department there..
I now go to the Blue Cross, where queueing is almost nonexistent, and you can contact your surgeon out of hours, even at the weekend.

[Dominic]

I witnessed a similar incident a couple of weeks ago, where a young male was having an altercation with the owner of a business. It escalated when the man picked up a screwdriver and threatened to stick it in his own throat. He was quickly subdued and tied up so that he couldn't hurt himself or anybody else. I left then but presume the young man was either taken to hospital or the local police station. He clearly needed mental health treatment, but that is totally inadequate.

It's the same in the UK and I imagine elsewhere though. Mental illnesses are always ignored by the Health Service, or else they have little pockets of goodness which aren't linked to a cohesive whole.

The one grain of comfort I got from the incident was that absolutely nobody got out their phone to film the incident I witnessed, other than the owner who obviously took a few pictures of the scene in the event of any future legal matters. But of the bystanders, I didn't see one of them filming the sorry scene with their phone. This is a credit to Cyprus.

[lotus]

That's nothing compared with the hospitals here in UK where there are security guards everywhere especially on A and E where waiting to be seen can often take ten hours at least ,It's not uncommon to be waiting 18 hours or more and if your in pain tempers will flare.violence towards nurses in the wards from patients are common too

[WHL]

Luckily these are isolated incidents over here, in over thirty years i only witnessed one, were a gypsy greek man brought his two teenager sons in both with cuts all over there arms and body, obviously they had had a fight but were saying it was an accident , they were told to sit and wait for a nurse to see them, after about fifteen minutes the dad flew over to the doctor shouting and swearing at him, he then threaten to sue the arse out of the hospital and doctor, the doctor threw his papers on the floor and grabbed the bloke by the throat and pinned him to the wall, he said your gonna sue me you piece of shit , his colleagues then pulled him off, while the rest of us in the waiting room clapped and cheered the doctor in support, had this been in the UK the doctor would of been struck off and never worked again, sadly.