A new OHS survey shows why the health sector is one of the most dangerous places to work.

The survey conducted by Monash University and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (Victorian Branch) showed high amounts of workers experience occupational health and safety incidents.

Two of the most alarming statistics found were that 70 per cent of nurses, midwives and carers surveyed had been confronted with violence and aggression at work in the past year and for almost 25 per cent it was on a regular basis.

In the past 12 months, nurses, midwives and carers reported experiencing on average at least two instances of the following: physical altercations (such as being hit, kicked, grabbed, bitten etc.), witnessing another person being subjected to a physical altercation and being verbally abused.

OVA incidents on nurses were most commonly perpetrated by patients (40 per cent), followed by patient relatives (25 per cent), patient visitors (13 per cent) and the public (four per cent).

A further 18 per cent of incidents were at the hands of colleagues.

Personal carers experienced more incidents, on average, while midwives were involved in the least amount of incidents of all types, compared to the other groups.

The survey was a chance to test the Organizational Performance Metric (OPM) as a measure of OHS level.

The OPM measures people’s opinions in relation to the health and safety of their workplaces, using eight key factors.

On the OPM gauge, personal carers ranked their workplaces lower than all other groups while enrolled nurses tended to give their workplaces slightly higher scores, on average.

One good point - most respondents reported having access to a safe needle device in the workplace and most had not had a needle stick injury in the past 12 months.

Those who did have a needle stick injury reported the injury and found they were generally managed well or very well.

The full report is available from the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (Victorian Branch) in PDF form, here.