ALMOST a third of staff at a Taunton hospital say they have experienced harassment, bullying or abuse in work in the past 12 months.

The shocking figures were published today for all NHS Trusts across England as part of the 2016 staff surveys.

The figures revealed that at the Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, who run Musgrove Park Hospital, 29 per cent of staff who took part in the annual survey, said they had experienced the abuse from patients, relatives or the public in the last 12 months, compared to 27 per cent nationally.

Another 18 per cent also said they had experienced physical violence from patients, relatives or the public in the past 12 months.

This is up by four per cent compared to results for 2015, and is higher than the national average of 15 per cent.

A further 72 per cent admitted working extra hours.

A total of 2079 staff took part in this year's survey, and a large per cent of those who said they had been subjected to physical violence being nurses.

Musgrove had one of the highest scores for staff reporting they had experienced physical violence, the lowest score was eight per cent and the highest was 21 per cent.

Of the 18 per cent who had experienced physical violence, 12 people said it had happened on one or two occasions, and four said it had happened between three and five times.

A further 19 said that one or two times they had experienced harassment at work and shockingly eight said they had experienced harassment or bullying from managers on one or more occasions.

However, the trust ranked in the 20 per cent of trusts overall in the survey results, with the majority of staff recommending it as a good place to work.

Peter Lewis, deputy chief executive at Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This year almost 2,100 members of staff at Musgrove completed the NHS staff survey, compared to 380 in 2014/15.

“The results show that we are still in the top 20 percent of trusts for our survey results, but there were some areas highlighted where we could do better.

"While we are pleased that we have a culture where staff feel supported to report incidents, we absolutely recognise that we need to do more to reduce the number of those who experience physical violence, harassment, bullying and abuse from patients and relatives.

“In 2015/16 we gave almost 700,000 episodes of patient care and the majority of the incidents reported were on medical and surgical wards, usually with the increasing number of elderly and confused patients we are caring for or those still recovering from anaesthetic or sedation.

"We are training all our staff in ways to de-escalate tensions and deal with abuse or violence.”