Alex Trelinski
A FEMALE doctor was verbally abused by an elderly patient at a Sevilla province health centre on the grounds that she wasn’t Spanish.
The incident happened on Tuesday evening at the centre in Lora del Rio, according to the Medical Union of Sevilla.
The on-duty doctor working in the emergency department tried to help a 70-year-old woman who refused treatment because of her nationality.
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Despite the medic trying to reassure her, the patient hurled xenophobic insults and tried to assault her.
The verbal tirade included ‘the foreign doctors don’t know anything’, ‘they don’t know what they’re doing and let them go back home’ and ‘you’ve come to kill people’.
Other phrases laden with sexual profanity were also uttered by the old woman.
The doctor was ‘rescued’ by a colleague, according to the Medical Union, who added that the Guardia Civil were called in ‘thus preventing the situation from escalating and causing physical injuries’.
The union has called for a hate crime prosecution and added that the medic required attention due to the stress she suffered while ‘trying to do her job’.
The Medical Union has demanded that measures be taken to guarantee the safety of professionals ‘who, regardless of their origin, deserve all our respect and admiration’, adding that ‘more and more non-EU doctors are providing their services’.
In April, another female doctor- originally from the Dominican Republic-was racially abused by an elderly Spaniard while trying to treat his wife during an emergency house call in the Murcia region.
She has filed a hate crime complaint with the Guardia Civil.
