The Scottish Executive is to toughen up laws protecting GPs and other health staff after a doctor was stabbed in her surgery.
Dr Helen Jackson, 56, is being treated in hospital after she was allegedly attacked at her practice in Hyndland Road, in the upmarket Hyndland area in the west end of Glasgow.
Ian McGregor has appeared at Glasgow Sheriff Court charged with attempted murder. The 62-year-old, from the Hillhead area of the city, made no plea and was remanded in custody.
Public health minister Shona Robison has now spoken to justice secretary Kenny MacAskill about speeding up plans to include all medical staff in legislation that protects frontline public workers.
She said: “Primary care staff in particular, I’ve always argued, were the key to the fact that they should always have been included in that legislation because they are working out in the community, often in relative isolation with not many people round about them, and they were always more vulnerable.
“And I think it is unfortunate that those calls weren’t headed when the legislation was going through, but we intend to make that right now, as soon as we can.”
And Dr Dean Marshall, chairman of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) Scottish GP committee, added: “Obviously we need to look at other things we can do to minimise the risk to those of us who work in primary care.”
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