TELEVISION camera crews have been granted access to one of the country’s busiest hospitals to highlight some of the tens of thousands of assaults committed against NHS staff each year.

Footage set to be broadcast by the Channel 5 documentary – A&E: When Patients Attack – shows staff being spat at, a man hurling chairs across a treatment cubicle, and security officers dealing with a scuffle in a waiting room.

The documentary charts security and clinical staff’s efforts to cope with violence and threats made by both patients and other visitors to Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Footage from the 28-monitor CCTV network covering the hospital’s 33-acre site shows one patient becoming abusive after apparently urinating in a sink.

Other incidents captured on camera include numerous examples of staff being forced to restrain aggressive patients, and an abusive visitor making death threats after being wrestled to the ground.

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