Chris Spyrou
speaker
12,818 appearances
108 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard yesterday
Chris Spyrou’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 108 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 30.
Appearances
And the data suggests it's getting worse.
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National figures show assault is now the second most common reason a health worker themselves ends up in a hospital bed, with those hospitalizations more than doubling in under a decade.
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State by state data varies, but around 50% of nurses and midwives have either been punched, slashed,
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Or kicked in hospitals across the country, while one in five have been threatened with a weapon.
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In Victoria specifically, the state's opposition says there were almost 24,000 violent incidents in hospitals between 2024 and 2025, marking 65 incidents a day.
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So the big question is: what can you actually do about it?
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Ahead of November's state election, the Victorian Liberals have floated a
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Recycled answer.
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They're promising to put 70 Protective Service Officers or PSOs across seven major hospitals in a two-year trial.
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It would be a first for Australian hospitals because right now, not a single state in the country is meeting this problem with armed guards.
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More police patrols, unarmed security on the floor, body-worn cameras, specialized de-escalation teams, yeah.
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Officers carrying the same loaded sidearms as sworn police officers, but with a fraction of the training.
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No.
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So does a firearm in the ED make anyone safer?
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Or does it just drop a brand new risk into an already tense environment?
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To help us pull this apart, we're joined by Maddie Harridens, Secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation's Victorian Branch, the Union for the Nurses and Midwives who actually be working shoulder to shoulder with these officers.
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Maddie, welcome to the briefing.
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Now, nurses and midwives are experiencing an extraordinary amount of violence at work right across the country.
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Can you tell us what that actually looks like on the front line right now?
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In a typical scenario, how does a dispute in a hospital then turn into violence against nurses and midwives?
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Showing 5501–5520 of 12,818 · page 276 of 641
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