Staff at a protest rally have shared experiences of being physically attacked, spat on and verbally abused while trying to work at Wagga Base Hospital, and say such incidents are becoming more common.
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About a dozen hospital employees gathered outside the hospital on Thursday after walking off the job in support of a Health Services Union call for improved security in the state's hospitals.
The HSU is leading the call for not only a boost in security staff numbers, but beefed up powers for these guards.
HSU representative Graeme Baillie, a former long-time cleaner and wardsman at Wagga Base, spoke on behalf of the workers.
He shared some of the incidents that had occurred to him during 34 years at the hospital.
"I've been bitten, kicked, had fingernails poked into me and been threatened. I could go through a whole variety," Mr Baillie said.
"Most wardsmen face the same sort of thing, the cleaners get it at times. The receptionists get flack when people are frustrated with waiting times in emergency. It just varies.
"It's one of those things that sort of builds up on you. After 30 years, I've retired. It's sort of catching up to me."
Mr Baillie backed the HSU's strike action, which saw hundreds of staff temporarily leave their jobs in both metropolitan and regional hospitals right across NSW.
"What we're trying to get is another 250 security staff in the metropolitan areas and in the regional and rural areas, they're reviewing the numbers that are required there," Mr Baillie said.
"Also, with the extra security guards, they want them to have special constable powers because at the moment they're a bit restricted as to what they can do.
"There's a lot of the rural areas that have got no security whatsoever and the nurses and other staff are left there on their own to deal with problems that come up because there's a restriction on how long it takes the police to get there if there's an incident."
Mr Baillie said staff going to work at the hospital should feel like they were coming to a safe environment, as should patients and visitors.
He said Wagga Base usually had two or three security guards on site.
Among the staff who walked off the job were employees from gardening, cleaning, X-ray and patient transport.
The state's paramedics, who are also represented by the HSU, did not walk off the job, but instead chose not to collect patients' billing details during a four-hour period.
A spokesperson from NSW Health said data from workers compensation claims shows that since 2016 the number of injuries to staff from assaults has continued to decrease.
"Across the state, around $19 million has been invested on security capital works in emergency departments already and over $5 million has been invested to upgrade personal duress alarms for staff to make our EDs safer," the spokesperson said.
"There has been an increase in security staff across NSW from 974 full time equivalent staff in 2010 to 1243 in 2018."
"NSW Health security staff have all the powers required to undertake the role needed of them, including the ability to detain an individual who has committed a crime until the police arrive and where necessary restrain an individual who has assaulted another or is threatening to assault another person, or who has damaged or threatened to damage NSW Health property."
The NSW government has appointed former health and police minister Peter Anderson to review security in NSW hospitals.
His final report is expected to be released later this year.
The NSW Health spokesperson said Mr Anderson was visiting every local health district and has met with hundreds of frontline staff.
