A consultant psychiatrist is in a "stable condition" following surgery after he was stabbed in the chest by a patient in St Patrick's Hospital yesterday afternoon.
The doctor was operated on in St James's Hospital immediately after the assault, which occurred in his office at approximately 2.30pm yesterday.
A 24-year-old outpatient from Howth was arrested shortly after the incident and was to appear before Kilmainham District Court this morning.
In a statement issued today St Patrick's Hospital said that all patients attending the facility, "whether in an in-patient or out-patient capacity, are risk assessed."
"Risk assessment is something the hospital takes very seriously and in the past, security measures have been found to be appropriate to the level of risk," the statement said. "However, in the unusual circumstance where an incident occurs, the incident is subject to a full and rigorous review."
The incident is yet further indication, however, that the medical profession requires greater protection from the law, according to the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO).
The IMO is currently in talks with the Health Service Executive on establishing a dedicated unit within the medical profession that has power to initiate proceedings when violent attacks on medical staff occur.
IMO industrial relations director, Fintan Hourihan, told ireland.comtoday that this would involve a "radical overhaul of the systems in place for managing and preventing [violent assaults] in the first place."
"We feel there is a need to have ... provision in certain instances for criminal prosecutions to be followed and initiated by the HSE or employers in the health service generally."
Mr Hourihan added: "There is no co-ordinated system where there is liaison with the gardaí or the DPP's office, and we feel that in severe cases of physical assault there needs to be some fast-track way of initiating prosecutions against offenders who perpetrate assaults on members of staff in the health service."
Mr Hourihan compared such a system to an existing one in the National Health Service in Britain, which has seen "a 15-fold rise in prosecutions" since it began.
The IMO is aware of three similar assaults in the psychiatry sector of the health service in the last three months, but Mr Hourihan believes that only a "minority" of the assaults that occur in the medical service each year are reported.
