Nurses in the Western Isles are about to start wearing bodycams. It is a development that should trouble anyone who still believes hospitals ought to be places of care rather than conflict. When frontline NHS staff need surveillance equipment simply to feel safe at work, something in our society has shifted in a deeply unsettling way, argues Herald columnist Calum Steele

I was hit by a depressing realisation last week that yet another part of what makes our islands special has been lost. The steady decline in tolerance and decency hit a new – and I fear not the last – low as the health board announced that bodycams would be rolled out for the protection of staff in the Western Isles hospital in Stornoway.

Violent outbursts in hospitals are nothing new, as anyone dealing daily with drunks and drug‑fuelled casualties will tell you. And while Stornoway is largely following the path taken by other services long ago, the idea of bodycams in a hospital still feels seismic. It shows how far general loutishness has been allowed to percolate, and is a stark reminder that consequence‑free thuggery has become so commonplace that nowhere – and no one – is safe any more.

The police and health board issued their obligatory statements claiming violence would not be tolerated, despite this latest move suggesting the opposite. In deciding to spend part of its budget not on patient care but on bodycams, the board is sending a message that the usual deterrents are no longer trusted to work, and that a degree of violence against staff has been priced in as part of daily life. The board clearly has little confidence the police and wider justice system can help the situation and, perhaps more pervasively, is suggesting that........

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