About traumatism of medical workers of the Kazan district psychiatric hospital

Among all medical and sanitary workers, one of the first places in terms of difficult working conditions undoubtedly belongs to the staff of mental hospitals. The peculiar work environment, which consists in constant communication with the mentally ill, is the cause of many special moments of professional harmfulness of work, of which the great traumatization of the medical staff deserves special attention. At the suggestion of the Central Medical Committee, we carried out, according to specially developed maps, the registration of injuries of medical workers of the Kazan district psychiatric hospital for the time since April 1, 1928. on April 1, 1929 A relatively small number of injuries during this period (175) This is explained by the fact that at the beginning the registration was not conducted accurately enough, and only in recent months, thanks to a number of measures taken, it has improved. The following can serve as an illustration: on average, 9 cases of injuries fall for each of the first 7 months, and 23 cases for each of the last 5 months. The last number should be considered closer to the truth. However, until the very end, the registration remained far from complete, since only more or less severe cases were registered, where there were objective signs of damage: wounds, scratches, burns, etc., which were checked by a doctor. Other cases, such as light blows, pushes, various insults. they were not noted at all, because the medical staff, firstly, did not attach any importance to them, considering them to be ordinary and absolutely inevitable phenomena of their profession, and, secondly, the staff on duty did not have enough time to register these mild cases of injuries, which were too frequent.