Clare Hamer has suffered three terrifying attacks at work in her career.

But she does not work in what has traditionally been seen as a violent profession - she is a staff nurse working for the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust.

New research from the British Medical Association shows health workers are four times more likely to be assaulted at work than other professions and Oxford is no exception.

Clare, who has been a nurse since 1973, believes the problem in Oxford has worsened in the last 20 years. She said: "Violence is going on all the time."

She was involved in the start of an extremely frightening incident when a knife-wielding patient went on a two-hour rampage in an Oxford hospital where she was working as a staff nurse.

In the incident, reported in the Oxford Mail, the patient later armed himself with a knife.

Clare said: "He had hurt himself and there was blood everywhere. Several of us got covered in blood and he was a danger to himself and to others.

"At the time I was on automatic. There was not time to feel frightened. There was an overiding feeling for the safety of patients. Afterwards I was shaken and frightened."

"You go over and over it in your mind as to ways you could have done better. I was apprehensive about going back to work but I made myself come in to make sure I could get myself in."

Clare has worked in psychiatric and general nursing and has been working for the trust for 15 months. The knife incident happened last year but she experienced some of her worst encounters in the psychiatric sector in Oxford.

When she was a student psychiatric nurse a female patient beat her about the head and locked her in a toilet. No one heard her screams and it was a while before she was rescued.

In another incident a paranoid schizophrenic crept up on her and threatened her with a large piece of wood.

She escaped after using a piece of wood to defend herself, but knows it could have turned nasty. The same patient later stuffed a petrol-soaked rag into the exhaust of another nurse's car to try and blow it up. Clare said: "He was very sick and that's how we rationalise it.

"If he had hit me I would have tried to hit him back but he backed off very quickly."

She has also heard other health workers tell tales of assaults they have suffered in the past, including a district nurse whose car was overturned by a patient while she was behind the wheel and a patient who tried to strangle another nurse in an Oxford hospital.

Clare believes violent incidents in some departments are commonplace, but stresses where she now works they are more rare.

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