Almost one in seven NHS staff - 14.47% - reported being physically assaulted by a patient or member of the public in the past year. That's the highest level in three years, and it comes from the 2025 NHS Staff Survey, published by NHS England in March 2026 and based on responses from more than 766,000 staff. A further quarter of staff reported harassment or abuse on top of that.
The risk isn't spread evenly. Ambulance trusts carry the heaviest burden, with around 52% of ambulance staff experiencing at least one violent incident in the past year, and nearly one in three ambulance staff reporting unwanted sexual behaviour directed at them. Emergency departments, mental health units and out-of-hours services all sit at the high end of the same data.
What the NHS is doing about it
Hospital trusts have started introducing tougher security measures - body-worn cameras and knife amnesty bins among them - as violence against staff has climbed. These are sensible steps, but they're building-based. They don't help a paramedic walking into an unknown address at 2am, a mental health nurse conducting a home visit, or an out-of-hours GP seeing a patient alone.
Why protective clothing is entering the conversation
That's the gap more frontline staff are quietly closing themselves, by adding a layer of slash-resistant clothing to their existing kit. It's worth being precise about what that means: slash-resistant clothing protects against cuts and slashing motions. It is not stab-proof, and it's not a substitute for training, de-escalation skills, situational awareness or the safety procedures your trust already has in place. It's one additional layer, not the whole answer.
It's also why Titan Depot is currently developing a dedicated PPE range for mental health and frontline care staff, built around the same slash-resistant materials used in our security and policing ranges - designed to sit under a uniform without changing how a member of staff is seen by the people they're caring for.
If you manage frontline teams, the data is clear enough on its own: the risk to your staff is rising, not falling. What you do about it - training, procedure, equipment, or all three - is the real question.
