Hartlepool ambulance worker attacked four times in a year left saddened by abuse while she was doing her job

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A Hartlepool ambulance worker has been attacked four times inside a year – and admitted: “Sometimes you think what’s the point? Why am I doing it?”

Kelly Tipp spoke up on the day that crews across the UK started a campaign to demand more public respect.

Kelly has been physically assaulted three times and verbally abused once in the last 12 months while she was doing her job.

Today, she said: “There’s nothing right about it is there? I don’t come to work to be assaulted, physically or verbally. For me it’s an absolute, 100 per cent no, it shouldn’t happen.

Hartlepool ambulance worker Kelly Tipp who has been assaulted four times in a year.

"I speak to people how I would like to be spoken back to. Most of the cases are drug and alcohol related. It’s not nice. Sometimes you think what’s the point? Why am I doing it? It makes you feel sad. Sometimes you get angry about it.”

Up until last year, mum-of-two Kelly had little experience of violence in her 18-year career at the North East Ambulance Service.

She said: “I now wear a body camera on every shift. Luckily, I haven’t had to use it as-yet but I know it’s there if I need it. We don’t have anything to defend ourselves if somebody is violent and aggressive towards us so the camera for me is an added extra to help me protect myself.”

Workers across the country have been kicked, slapped, head butted and attacked with knives.

Lauren Kay, a health advisor who faced regular abuse on the phone.

Latest figures show 32 ambulance workers were attacked every day last year. In the North East, there were 552 attacks in the last year compared to 484 the year before.

In 2021, 233 North East workers were physically attacked, 142 were verbally abused and 222 had to suffer threatening behaviour.

Another NEAS worker has also spoken up.

During the two years that Lauren Kay spent as a 999 and 111 health advisor in the Emergency Operations Centre at NEAS, she was regularly subjected to abuse over the phone.

But one particular incident – a drug user who became abusive after refusing to give his details – stuck in Lauren’s mind.

She recalled: “He immediately got very aggressive and spent a lot of time asking me over and over again how I slept at night, calling me a murderer and told me he was going to hurt me when he found me and he hoped I would burn in hell.”

Vicky Court, deputy chief operating officer at North East Ambulance Service, said ambulance staff ‘come to work to help people and under no circumstances should they expect to find themselves a victim of any form of abuse whilst trying to do so.

The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE) – with support from NHS England - has today launched the national #WorkWithoutFear campaign to highlight the profound impact of this abuse on the everyday lives of ambulance staff.

The aim is to encourage the minority of people who commit these offences to have respect for the people who are trying to help them, their friends and families when they need it most.

The public can pledge their support for the campaign by using #WorkWithoutFear on social media and by visiting www.aace.org.uk/vaa to view films about some of those affected.

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