Violence Against SNS Healthcare Professionals Climbs to a Record 3,429 Cases in 2025, Up 33% Year-on-Year — Ordem dos Médicos Says the Real Number Is Far Higher and 60% of Reported Episodes Are Psychological

The Ministry of Health released the 2025 register of violence against SNS professionals on Monday, 28 April, and the headline figures put the issue back at the top of the health-policy agenda. A record 3,429 incidents were reported across SNS units last year, a 33% increase on the 2024 total. The Ordem dos Médicos — represented in public statements by Bastonário Carlos Cortes — went on television Wednesday morning to underline a point the data itself already makes: the number is conservative, because under-reporting in front-line settings remains widespread.

The 2025 ledger breaks down as follows. Roughly 60% of the 3,429 episodes — about 2,067 cases — are recorded as psychological violence: verbal aggression, threats, intimidation, sustained harassment by patients or family members. Physical violence accounts for 21% — 730 cases — covering everything from pushing and slapping to spitting, weapons threats and direct assault. The balance is split across discriminatory abuse, online harassment of clinicians and damage to property in clinical settings. The reported cases produced 2,012 days of work absence among the affected staff, a figure that is itself probably an undercount given that many short absences are taken as normal sick leave rather than reported through the violence-incident channel.

Where the increases are concentrated

Emergency departments and primary-care urgent-attention units (atendimento complementar) again account for the largest share of incidents. Mental-health units rank disproportionately high relative to their staff base — a pattern visible in earlier years and reinforced in the 2025 numbers. Triage-area incidents, often linked to long waits, continue to climb in step with overall ED activity. The geographic distribution mirrors population density, with the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region producing the bulk of reports.

The Ordem dos Médicos has been pressing for a structural response since 2023, when the previous government set up the Plano de Ação Contra a Violência sobre Profissionais de Saúde. The 2025 numbers were accompanied by progress notes on prevention: 596 in-service training sessions delivered last year reached 12,752 SNS professionals, a 43% increase on the 2024 training count. Hospital security cameras, panic buttons in triage stations and protected-flow design have been rolled out unevenly across the network, and the Ordem has continued to argue that the implementation map needs to be made public so that gaps are visible.

The legal layer

The framework that matters here is the law that came into force on 18 April 2025, aggravating the criminal classification for assault crimes against healthcare professionals on duty. The change classifies most such assaults as crimes públicos — meaning the public prosecutor can pursue charges based on knowledge of the fact alone, without a complaint from the victim. That removes a long-standing barrier where clinicians, especially in emergency settings, declined to file a queixa for fear of personal retaliation or because they wanted to put the incident behind them. Prosecutors began pursuing public-crime cases under the new framework in mid-2025, and the Ordem expects 2026 to be the first full year in which the legal change feeds back into the reporting numbers.

Carlos Cortes summarised the Ordem's position in his Wednesday-morning interview: the real situation is more serious than 3,429 cases, the under-reporting gap remains the biggest blind spot, and the priority for the SNS network is now to convert the legal change into uniform protection across hospitals and centros de saúde — not just the tertiary urban units that already have hardware in place.