The Health Service Executive has been urged to improve security arrangements at hospitals and outreach clinics following a number of attacks on staff, particularly those working in the psychiatric services.
The call came at the annual conference of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association at the weekend which heard details of a number of incidents in which staff and patients were threatened or attacked.
A consultant psychiatrist in the southeast, Dr Jane Falvey said she would refuse to see patients at a new outreach clinic being set up in her area unless the HSE provided security personnel at the facility.
This follows a recent incident in which she was threatened by a patient at the existing clinic.
The patient lunged at her with his fist, he did not connect with her but fled when she pressed a panic button.
However, he returned a few days later with a man whom gardaí described as "a notorious and a very dangerous guy" which she found "much more upsetting". When gardaí were called he disappeared.
Dr Falvey said panic buttons were not enough because even when she pressed one on the day that the patient lunged at her, the reception desk knew a member of staff needed help but did not know which room the panic button had been set off in.
"I hit the panic button and all I could hear then was running steps and people shouting where is it, where is it," she said.
"We have a trainee policeman in this clinic at the moment and he knew nothing about the incident but he said to me yesterday, 'you're very open here aren't you' . . . he couldn't get over that we didn't have security. He thought it was crazy," she added.
The incident, she said, underlined to her how vulnerable people like her were.
"It just underlined to me how vulnerable we are, particularly since we are opening up new clinics . . . They are not purpose-built, they are often just a detached house in a town, and there's one coming up, I don't want to mention what town, but they expect me to go out there with one nurse and do clinics in it and I'm not prepared to do it, not in the current circumstances," she said.
Dr Falvey, who has also had her car smashed up twice, said she understood three psychiatrists had been seriously injured in Dublin in the past year.
In the most recent incident a consultant psychiatrist was stabbed during a consultation at St Patrick's hospital. Dr Michael McDonough had to undergo emergency surgery after one of his arteries was severed in that attack last month.
Dr Brendan Healy, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Sligo General Hospital, said that in his hospital recently, patients on a general ward had to use a mobile phone to ring gardaí "for protection" when one of their fellow patients became violent and the nurses were not able to cope.
He added that every casualty unit was like a battle field and they too needed more security.
"You see there might be one or two security people on at night in a big hospital and there might be more than one area that they are needed in," he said.
Dr Falvey tabled an emergency motion, which received the full support of delegates, calling on the HSE to fulfil its legal obligations and duty of care to its staff by reviewing and upgrading security arrangements in all hospitals and at off site clinics.