Hundreds more health workers were assaulted at work last year, according to Health New Zealand data - with Auckland central and Waikato seeing the biggest spikes.
Nationally, about 14,000 assaults on staff by patients, family members and visitors, were recorded in the two-year period between January 2023 and December 2024.
The number of assaults increased by 30% between the first half of 2023 and the second half of last year.
Fifteen out of 19 health districts saw increases in assaults on staff over the period.
Auckland central (covering Auckland City Hospital, Starship Children's Hospital and Greenlane Clinical Centre) saw the number of attacks double over the period, and accounted for 57% of the national increase.
The district recorded more than 1100 assaults on staff in the second half of 2024.
The Waikato district also saw a significant increase of 59% in the number of assaults over the period.
An Auckland nurse, speaking in her capacity as a delegate for the NZ Nurses Organisation (NZNO), said staff were being abused every day.
"We've been physically attacked, things being thrown at us like chairs or urine bottles, whatever they can really reach they do tend to throw at us when they get frustrated ... and we've been punched."
The nurse, who did not want to be named, said staff have had to deal with dangerous situations themselves due to delays in security or police arriving.
"We've had incidents where we've had patients come up with weapons on our ward and we've had to remove those weapons, and having to remove those weapons also causes conflict and some endangerment of your own safety."
She said while they were told to call police when being threatened, police had at times questioned why they needed to attend when the hospital had its own security.
Staff were concerned about the police's further planned withdrawals from mental health incidents, she said.
The nurse said she did not see any effects from filing incident reports, as they were not followed up on by management.
"I think they don't want to face up to the reality of what's happening and just kind of want to sweep it under the rug - it's not happening and not facing it - because there's just no budget as such to deal with the situation."
In an Official Information Act response to RNZ, HNZ said patients' behaviour can be unpredictable, due to sometimes being cognitively impacted by some form of substance or alcohol abuse, or coping with the initial impact of an acute injury.
It said "we cannot prevent all these issues from occurring, but have robust processes in place to manage them".
The Public Service Association's national secretary, Fleur Fitzsimons, said hospitals' management have normalised violence to staff in their attitude towards it.
"Claims that they can't prevent violence and assaults are wrong, every health worker deserves better from their employer than this normalising and minimising of violence and assaults.
"The employer here is not only normalising and accepting violence against health workers, but we are concerned there are failures to properly investigate incident reports.
"And we've even had reports of the employer scolding members for using agreed emergency protocols and pressure to downplay the severity of incidents, this is unacceptable."
