Ministers will lay regulations before Holyrood today to extend the Emergency Workers Act to cover doctors, nurses, midwives and ambulance workers when they are doing routine work in the community.
The Act currently provides legal protection to these groups within hospitals or when they are responding to an emergency but the 2005 legislation created an anomaly by not covering them when they were out on routine visits.
Public health minister Shona Robison said: "We made a commitment to extend the Emergency Workers Act to enhance the protection provided to NHS staff and extend it to GPs, other doctors, nurses and midwives working in the community.
"We owe our NHS staff a huge debt of gratitude for the work they do sometimes in challenging circumstances. Sadly there are a mindless minority who think it is acceptable to abuse and attack health workers ignoring the vital service they provide and the terrible impact this kind of behaviour can have on staff morale."
Ms Robison cited the brutal knife attack on a GP in her surgery in Glasgow back in August as "a shocking incident which highlighted that health workers working in the community are vulnerable".
Dr Helen Jackson, 56, was stabbed in her Hyndland surgery in the west end of Glasgow. A 62-year-old was later arrested in connection with the incident which left Dr Jackson, a GP for 28 years, with a stomach wound that required emergency treatment.
Earlier this month a 45-year-old man was arrested in connection with an assault on a Clydebank GP.
Strathclyde Police detained the man after the doctor was attacked around 3.30pm at Clydebank Health Centre in West Dunbartonshire.
Ms Robison said of the reform outlined today: "This extension to the Emergency Workers Act will provide additional protection for GPs, nurses and midwives working in the community. I will lay before Parliament the regulations necessary to extend the Emergency Workers Act to doctors, nurses and midwives whenever and wherever they are on duty."
Figures released by the Crown Office showed that 461 people were convicted under the act in 2006-07 - almost double the amount from the previous year. Most attacks over the two years came in the Glasgow Sheriff Court jurisdiction which had 199 attacks.
A spokeswoman for the British Medical Association earlier this month said the problem was that most doctors do not report assaults.
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