Violence Against Healthcare: A Public Health Issue beyond Conflict Settings

A 3-year analysis released in August 2021 by the WHO indicated that more than 700 healthcare workers and patients have died (2,000 injured) as a result of attacks against health facilities since 2017. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the risks even worse for doctors, nurses, and support staff, unfortunately. According to the latest figures from the International Committee of the Red Cross, 848 COVID-19-related violent incidents were recorded in 2020, and this is likely an underrepresentation of a much more widespread phenomenon. In response to rises in COVID-19-related attacks against healthcare, some countries have taken action. In Algeria, for instance, the penal code was amended to increase protection for healthcare workers against attacks and to punish individuals who damage health facilities. In the United Kingdom, the police, crime, sentencing, and courts bill proposed increased the maximum penalty from 12 months to 2 years in prison for anyone who assaults an emergency worker. Measures taken by countries represent a good practical way to counteract this crisis within COVID-19. However, we stress the importance of primary prevention with the use of communication: social media and other communication channels are fundamentally important to combat violence against health professionals, both to inform the population with quality data and to disseminate campaigns to prevent these acts.

Doubling the Accuracy of Indoor Positioning: Frequency Diversity

Determination of indoor position based on fine time measurement (FTM) of the round trip time (RTT) of a signal between an initiator (smartphone) and a responder (Wi-Fi access point) enables a number of applications. However, the accuracy currently attainable—standard deviations of 1–2 m in distance measurement under favorable circumstances—limits the range of possible applications. An emergency worker, for example, may not be able to unequivocally determine on which floor someone in need of help is in a multi-story building. The error in position depends on several factors, including the bandwidth of the RF signal, delay of the signal due to the high relative permittivity of construction materials, and the geometry-dependent “noise gain” of position determination. Errors in distance measurements have unusal properties that are exposed here. Improvements in accuracy depend on understanding all of these error sources. This paper introduces “frequency diversity,” a method for doubling the accuracy of indoor position determination using weighted averages of measurements with uncorrelated errors obtained in different channels. The properties of this method are verified experimentally with a range of responders. Finally, different ways of using the distance measurements to determine indoor position are discussed and the Bayesian grid update method shown to be more useful than others, given the non-Gaussian nature of the measurement errors.

Whither Section 89(1) of the Police Act 1996?

Shortly after the establishment of police forces in England, Parliament provided that it was an offence to assault an officer who was acting in the execution of their duty at the material time. This long-established offence is now to be found in s. 89(1) of the Police Act 1996. As this article seeks to demonstrate, establishing that an officer was acting within the execution of their duty has sometimes caused problems for the prosecution. It is argued here, however, that such difficulties need no longer arise following the enactment of s. 1 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018. Without the matter being debated in Parliament, and despite the silence of the 2018 Act, the creation of the new statutory offence of assaulting an emergency worker while they are carrying out functions as such makes it highly likely that in the future, assaults on police officers will no longer be prosecuted under s. 89(1).

Mental Health Professionals Working in a Shared Traumatic Reality

Professionals working in a shared traumatic reality—that is, in a disaster in their home community—are doubly exposed: both as individuals who experienced the disaster at first hand and as professionals who treat people traumatized by it. This chapter opens with a discussion of the development of the concept of “shared traumatic reality” and a presentation of the five key features of professionals’ double exposure: intrusive anxiety, lapses of empathy, immersion in professional role, role expansion, and changes in place and time of work. It then presents the findings of studies of Israeli mental health professionals who lived and worked near the Gaza border during the 2009 Gaza War. The findings of the quantitative study of 63 professionals, highlight the unique contribution that lapses of empathy made to the professionals’ distress and that their immersion in their professional role made to their personal growth. The qualitative study presents two cases, one of an emergency worker, the other of a clinician in the course of ongoing work, both of whom were confronted with the need to choose between attending to their children or to their clients. The cases convey something of the process by which the choice was made and the professionals’ feelings about their choice afterwards. They suggest that some of the widespread distress reported by professionals working in the wake of communal disasters derives not solely from exposure to their clients’ traumatic experience or even from their primary exposure to the disaster, but from their conflict of roles and loyalties.