A FORMER psychiatric nurse is helping frontline NHS staff deal with a rising tide of violence on hospital wards.

Andrew Frankel runs courses for doctors and nurses who have to deal with trouble and not become victims of stess and anxiety themselves.

"I'm giving people the skills they need for dealing with challenging and difficult-to-manage people," he said.

Recently, Health Secretary Alan Milburn said he was "sickened by the tide of violence NHS staff are suffering."

In the first six months of this year there were 71 violent incidents at Blackburn Royal Infirmary and Queens' Park Hospital, in Blackburn. Nurses were punched and kicked and sexually harassed.

"There is a disturbing, increasing trend for people to be threatening and aggressive, both verbally and physically," Mr Frankel said.

"The frequent response by staff who face situations where there is a possibility of violence and aggression and are not properly trained is to withdraw.

"This can include taking long-term sick, avoiding 'customer' contact, leaving or responding in an inappropriate or even dangerous way, putting themselves and others at risk."

Mr Frankel, director of Care Enterprise Security, based in Coppull, near Chorley, aims to provide training to equip NHS staff in how to deal with threatening situations in a "non-physical and non-confrontational" way, using workshops.

"People bring their own case studies and past experiences and we enact these in role play.

"We teach people how to defuse things," he said.

Now, Mr Frankel is aiming to move into industrial and commercial settings. Pollution, noise, overcrowding and even new technology all cause problems. "There's a lot of anger out there in the general population," he said.