Union representatives are concerned that mental health workers in Oxfordshire deal with an average of four acts of violence or aggression every day.

Oxfordshire Mental Healthcare Trust claims a figure of 1,605 incidents affecting its 1,700 staff recorded between April 2003 and March this year is "not unusual".

But the Royal College of Nursing said staff should not expect to be "beaten up at work", and managers should provide better systems to avoid attacks and training to diffuse aggressive situations.

RCN spokesman Patricia Marquis said: "These figures are very disappointing and it has been raised by the RCN as a concern.

"The trust's view seems to be that aggression and violence is to be expected, but no, it's not. There's going to be a higher level than on a general hospital ward, but we should not be complacent. Staff should not expect to be beaten up at work. There seems to be a perception that it's part of the job, so incidents aren't taken seriously.

"A lot could have been prevented or pre-empted had there been good risk assessment systems in place or staff had had proper training."

Ms Marquis said violence and aggression included nurses attacked while trying to break up fights between patients, receiving injuries because they were the only person trained to use restraining methods and being scolded by boiling water thrown at them. The trust said the number of incidents published in its health and safety report was high because staff were encouraged to report any incident, however small.

Jon Allen, the trust's director of nursing and clinical governance, said the statistics included self-harming patients and patient-to-patient incidents, which were reported twice.

He said: "Obviously we're one of the areas of health care that has the highest level of violence and aggression, and some of those incidents will be quite low level.

"We encourage reporting, from verbal attacks to physical assaults, whether against a member of staff or another patient.

"This is something we constantly work on in training to help staff manage people in their care.

"Many of our patients are often not culpable for their actions because their mental illness is driving them.

"Although it looks like high numbers, it often concerns a very small percentage of patients.

"In the real world, we do have violence and aggression in mental health care, but I wouldn't want it to come across that we were complacent about this."

According to the health and safety report, there were also seven patient deaths and 77 medication errors between April 2003 and March 2004.

Mr Allen said some of the deaths were from natural causes and there had been no life-threatening medication errors.

He said: "Anything that is serious we follow up.

"Again, people are encouraged to report something if it's a serious error.

"But it's very unusual, and we've had no life-threatening medication errors."