Violent assaults on ER nurses rise as programs cut

[Warpy]

Violence against nurses and other medical professionals appears to be increasing around the country as the number of drug addicts, alcoholics and psychiatric patients showing up at emergency rooms climbs.
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"It's come to the point where nurses are saying, 'Enough is enough. The slapping, screaming and groping are not part of the job,'" said Joseph Bellino, president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, which represents professionals who manage security at hospitals.

Visits to ERs for drug- and alcohol-related incidents climbed from about 1.6 million in 2005 to nearly 2 million in 2008, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. From 2006 to 2008, the number of those visits resulting in violence jumped from 16,277 to 21,406, the agency said.

Nurses and experts in mental health and addiction say the problem has only been getting worse since then because of the downturn in the economy, as cash-strapped states close state hospitals, cut mental health jobs, eliminate addiction programs and curtail other services.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38645144/ns/health-health_care/

The dirty secret is that assaults happen in all areas of the hospital, even pediatrics, from patients and family members. Nurses are not protected and are discouraged from pressing charges. That's why 50% of us have quit.

[Heddi]

1. I was just kicked in the babymaker a few days ago by a violent patient. Aaah,....love being an ER RN

This was a patient with Downs Syndrome. Police were there when he kicked me. He kicked me maliciously but they refused to allow me to press charges (I bled vaginally for 2 days afterwards, including an immediate gush as it happened) because they felt he didn't do it maliciously.

I have been spit on by patients who are HIV/Hep C positive (spare me the "not contagious via saliva" bullshit---that's small amounts of saliva as in a kiss...not a fucking honker loogie the size of a fried egg).

I've had urine thrown at me. Feces thrown at me.

I have been punched, bitten, scratched, felt up, groped, offered to have someone fuck me up the ass, asked to suck several dicks, and threatened to be attacked when I got out of work.

It's not just me. All my co-workers. One guy I work with was stabbed with a blood collection tube by a patient. Another girl was tackled in the parking lot as she was leaving by a patient that she discharged 4 hours previously (he didn't get the pain meds he wanted).

One of the CNA's in the ER was recently grabbed by her arm, pulled the arm behind her back, grabbed her by her ponytail and had her head slammed into a wall repeatedly. SHe wouldn't let someone go out and smoke.

Know how many people filed charges??

0

It's discouraged. The police, while our friends in some respects,really don't have an interest in pressing charges against a 78 year old man who punched a nurse in the jaw.

It's discouraged by our jobs.Oh fill out an incident report, pee in a cup and get checked out but really, do you REALLY want to press charges??? You're really discouraged to press charges. You're even kind of discouraged to file an incident report.

:(

[Warpy]

2. The denial by management is just unbelievable

and I know a nurse who was fired for having a patient who punched her in the face and broke her orbit arrested for assault.

Management then comes around to give pep talks on customer service, the most insulting thing in the world. Hospitals are not hotels, guys, and we're not servants.

If ever a profession was overdue for unionizing across the board, it's nursing.

[Heddi]

4. The whole thrust of hospitals now is "Serivce of Excellence" and Customer Service

Hospitals aren't a Customer fucking Service business.

All of our patients are given survey cards when they're discharged from the hospial and they're called with a followup if they don't mail the card in.

Questions like:

how likely would you be to reccomend this hospital to your friends
was your call light answered in a reasonable time
did you receive EXCELLENT service with every interaction?

what the fuck? IN a reasonable time? Maybe it wasn't because I was too busy keeping the guy in the room next to you ALIVE to answer your call light you pressed every 2 minutes to get a blaket...oh and now some water...oh miss my water is too wet...oh and my blanket is too warm...can you untuck my feet? oh miss my feet are cold again. Can you fluff my pillow? nurse, nurse, can you let me know the results of my labwork that I had done 3 days ago and compare it with the labs that were drawn in 1951....

My job isn't to fluff pillows and massage testicles. It's to keep people alive, okay? And sometimes no, you will not get a blanket because I have too many patients to care for safely, I have no ancillary staff to help me, I'm working my 11th straight hour without taking a piss break and the dude down the hall just keeps trying to not fucking live. Your blanket, or controlling Ms. Jones' heart rate of 20? Or getting the bead out of the gullet of the 2 year old that's choking? Or getting 18 other people blankets. And rubbing their fucking balls.

Sorry. I should not be judged on "customer service". If you are alive when you leave my ER< then I did my job. If the splinter is removed from your foot then I did my job.If your fucking heart is beating better than it was when you came in then I did my job. Did I keep Granddad alive for one more Christmas? Then I did my job. THAT is what a nurse should be judged on, now how swiftly she or he can attend to the often times meanigless,control-minded whims of asshole patients.

...I have been coding a patient...CPR and the whole bit....and had a patient's family member OPEN THE CURTAIN AND WALK INTO THE ROOM WE ARE CODING SOMEONE and say "Um, is anyone gonna get my dad that glass of water he asked for FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO????" Seriously? Seriously. No fucking joke. CPR,blood everywhere, 20 people in the room, and this daft fool wants a glass of fucking water.

I bet we all got "less than excellent service" from her....

[Warpy]

5. Have you been following this one on the nursing boards out there?

Nothing will cause a flamefest like bringing this subject up, the corporate suits who think we should give service with a smile at all times, rub Vaseline on our teeth like beauty queens, of course we'll give them all hand jobs, we live to serve instead of keeping them ALIVE.

And people wonder why I was so disgusted with the whole business I even let my license go last year.

I'm glad some of us are still in the trenches. I just wish all the suits would go Galt so we could do our fucking jobs.

[Heddi]

7. I think one of the main probs is that Hospital Mgmt isn't "healthcare" people...our CEO used to be

CEO of a fucking GROCERY STORE CHAIN.

Now if someone can give me a cogent argument as to how GROCERY STORES are in any way related to HOSPITALS, I'll buy you lunch at Denny's.

So my department's budget is written by a guy that used to buy produce by the gross tonne. Management hiring and firings are decided by someone who's main job was to hire people that could adequately stock a freezer after hours.

It's ridiciulous. Grocery Store CEO running a fucking hospital.

I find that hospitals that are at least teaching institutions, or affiliated with universities, they generally have, yanno, PROFESSIONAL HEALTHCARE people at the helm. People with multiple degrees in varrying specialties. People who have made education and healthcare a central part of their lives since starting school eons ago.

Not people that used to be a manager at WALGREENS (one of our hospital administrators). Or Regional Director of a Grocery Store (our CEO). Our COO used to sell pharmaceuticals...that makes him kind of healthcarey, right?

Then for the DON---ha ha ha ha. Yeah, some tit that hasn't seen the flip side of a stethoscope since 1972. Who has no clue about bedside nursing. Who went from BSN to MBA and spent no more than a year doing "dirty work" with patients before mo-mo-moving on up to be an over paid paperpusher. Who doesn't really see what the big deal is about a single nurse having 8 patients on an Acute Care floor, with no CNA's. WHATS THE BIG DEAL GIRLS???

Fuck management. Hospitals would be better run if you cut out all the fatty managerial waste and had hospitals run by DOCTORS and NURSES. Not MBA's who got their BSN as an afterthought, or CEO's that jump from unrelated field to unrelated field.

[Tumbulu]

3. This is so sad

and it seems that the rudeness of people is celebrated by media and many elements of our culture.

Violence against the female and the traditionally female professions seems to be increasing and it both saddens and frightens me.

[Better Today]

6. There's another reason they've jumped because of the economy, not just because

of services being cut, but the number of people at their wit's end, and hence self-medicating, or simply going off the deep end has seriously increased.