'What happened is a nightmare'

Anyone who truely cared could have read the concerns of nurses right here posting about this situation. They could have read many post expressing concern that dangerous criminal were being admitted to hospitals, dangerous criminals and dangerously mental ill patients. These same hospitals are severly understaffed in general and specifically understaffed in the security department. Darn right that patients are in danger from other patients, as are nurses, doctors support staff and patient family. Let us not forget that staff has to be worked up for criminal hx but that the family member visiting the sweet old lady next to your ma might be Ted Bundy.

And on top of that--when we do complain about violent or sexually inappropriate patients, our concerns are invalidated and dismissed... we hear BS nonsense responses from the people who should be supporting us the most...'It's their condition, they don't mean it...' as if that changes the effect on the victim... " or--it's part of being a nurse' or 'when the infection is gone they won't be like that'-- as if that takes away what did happen when they were confused...we are told not to call the police, but the administrator or DON must make that decision..hours and days later sometimes, because PR is more important than keeping your staff safe....and depending on which state you work in, we have no union rep to go to....and get reprimanded if we act on our own legally in these matters....
so where does that leave us????

spacenurse - that whole thing makes me want to cry. That poor man.

I see NO good reason for a psych patient to be placed in a ward with others, especially one with the diseases he had.

I have never been seriously wounded by a patient, but I've seen other nurses and aides get hurt, and it makes me angry. I've heard the platitudes: "It's not their fault." "They didn't mean to do it.", and that's bogus, as far as I'm concerned. I understand when patients are confused that sometimes they 'act out', but it shouldn't be looked at as part of our jobs to accept the abuse that comes along with it.

The issue is an interesting one, but the article is engineered to draw emotional response by making psych pts sound evil:

- 'Part of the problem, said lawyer Laura Watts, national director of the Canadian Centre for Elder Law Studies in Vancouver, is that psychiatric patients, because of their increased health needs, sometimes end up in hospitals where they can mix with the general patient population.'

I don't know about your health system, but in ours, the closer a pt's need relates to his physical survival, that's what gets addressed first. So if we have say a psych pt, say a suicide attempt, who has a cardiac problem that requires monitoring, he's going to leave psych, where they don't have telemetry equipment, and go to tele, where they don't have psych nurses and techs.

-'"Imagine your 85-year-old grandmother who is frail and has higher care needs," Ms. Watts said. "Then think of someone being put here near her with psychiatric needs. It's a recipe for abuse."'

Think of your grandmother having psychiatric needs and being denied proper medical care because of that added need, how 'bout that?

Now note this excerpt from the article:

1) "He was sent to Bridgepoint Hospital on Nov. 29, 2004, from North York General Hospital, where he had spent more than two months being treated for confusion and other problems."

He was being treated for confusion, a psych need. Please review the behavior described below:

2) "After the attack in Toronto, Mr. Sayed was unable to communicate, was constantly restless, moaning, crying and agitated. He fought against those who touched him and spit out medication provided to him, according to the amended statement of claim against Mr. Henriques."

Might this not apply to some confused pts you have known, whether attacked or not?

So while the issue of protecting pts from pts is a good one, isn't the issue raised by this incident not that all psych pts should be banned from non-psych facilities, as the article makes out, but rather that one facility failed to restrain or place a sitter with a pt who had already been seen attacking a helpless pt?

Or, if he was known from his history to be a danger to others, been restrained or assigned a sitter on arrival?

We as nurses should be less gullible to hospital-suing lawyers' media appeals than the general public, especially as those appeals depend on distortions of health care fact. We, more than the public, should suspect that such distortions mask a paucity of scientific justification.

And we should suspect and watchdog attacks on entire patient populations, especially those helpless to mount a rational defence and in positions with little advocacy, such as psych patients.

The article appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper on Sat Jan 05, 2008. Not only was it about protecting patients but protecting nurses who have been abused. Most who read this forum would be interested in reading the statistics quoted in the article. It only scatched the surface of abuse that happens to healthcare workers.

After viewing the article listed by the original poster, there is content neglected that was in the actual newsprinted paper. Sadly, the statistics about nurse abuse didn't make it to the internet version.

of course, a psyche pt's medical needs are as important as anyone else's.
i don't think anyone is disputing that.
but any professional, should be able to anticipate those actions by the acutely psychotic, and plan accordingly.
this psyche pt, should have never gotten a 2nd chance, resulting in force-fdg human feces to a helpless pt.
it's tragic enough, that it happened even a first time.
too much danged apathy.

leslie