Nurses and other NHS staff are being increasingly harassed by patients who film them with phones and threaten to post the footage online, new research has suggested.
A survey of thousands of UK healthcare workers by Unison revealed that one in seven have experienced unwanted and intrusive filming or photography in the last year.
“Harassing NHS workers through social media, or threatening to post material online, is completely unacceptable”
Christina McAnea
The union said the incidents were leaving staff feeling unsettled, intimidated, fearful and vulnerable while trying to do their jobs.
The results of the survey were unveiled to coincide with Unison’s annual health conference, being held in Liverpool this week.
Experiences have included people using their phones to film workers on duty or giving emergency care while they treat patients for cardiac arrests.
This footage has been livestreamed or put on social media platforms such as TikTok.
Unison warned that phone cameras were being used as the digital equivalent of “rubbernecking” with one member of public filming a victim of a car accident despite staff begging them to stop.
Healthcare workers have warned that phones, webcams and other hidden devices are being commonly used alongside threats or are being used as bargaining tools to get medication prescribed.
The incidents are occurring in a variety of settings, including hospitals, patient homes and during medical consultations.
Unison members vote to end bullying and harassment in the NHS
Bullying and harassment featured during Unison’s 2025 Health Care Service Group Conference this week, with members unanimously calling for it to end.
Members called upon the union’s health service group executive to work with employers nationally and locally to ensure that any ‘zero tolerance’ policies were actively used within workplaces.
They also called for trust boards to have a named champion to actively promote the policies in their workplaces.
Christine Dalton, from the Christie Cancer Health Branch, told the conference that healthcare workers were experiencing discrimination and inappropriate behaviour “from the very people we are there to support, care and treat”.
She said: “Our NHS – a place where we come to work, to care for our patients and clients to provide [a] service, to improve lives and, for some, provide support and care in those final days.
“But that workplace is becoming even more challenging. We’re treated with a lack of respect.”
Ms Dalton argued that ‘zero tolerance’ was a phase that is frequently used, but rarely properly implemented.
“At my workplace, we’re told that many of our patients cannot be treated anywhere else, therefore we do not have a ‘zero tolerance approach’,” she added.
“It shouldn’t be too much to ask our employers to provide us with a safe environment to work in, and that we complete our shifts and exit our workplace in the same condition that we entered it at the beginning of our shift.”
Respondents to the survey said that, when asked to stop, people had become confrontational and refused to delete footage, with some threatening to post the recordings on social media.
One respondent said: “A patient in A&E was discharged so we had to escort him out of the department as he was refusing to leave.
“None of us put our hands on the patient, but he was filming us with his phone saying he was going to share the footage on Facebook.”
Meanwhile, a district nurse respondent said: “A patient informed us he had CCTV of our cars parked outside his house when we visit and he has all of our registration numbers recorded.
“He has threatened to crash into certain members of staff if he sees them in their cars.”
The incidents come as part of a wider pattern of harassment, abuse and violence against NHS staff by patients, their families and visitors, Unison research found.
The union surveyed more than 14,000 healthcare workers about their experiences in the past year, with 19% reporting they had been subject to violence as they went about their jobs.
Meanwhile, a joint survey between Nursing Times and Unison of more than 1,000 nursing and midwifery staff and students, conducted in February 2025, found that 93% of respondents had experienced physical violence at some point in their careers.
Unison said NHS trusts must send a clear signal that attacks or intimidation of staff, in any form, were unacceptable.
The union called for laws to be tightened to make it clear that workplace harassment, even if conducted online, was still an offence for which people could be prosecuted.
Further, it called for NHS trusts to ensure signs were displayed warning that anyone filming interactions with staff risk being kicked out of the premises.
Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: “Harassing NHS workers through social media, or threatening to post material online, is completely unacceptable.
“Employers and the government must take this issue seriously, provide solid support and intervene properly, not abandon staff to tackle the online bullies themselves.
“Employers should make it clear that filming staff at work without consent is harassment and that they will come down hard on anyone who indulges in this kind of threatening anti-social behaviour.”
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