hello to everyone, last week another aide and i were in a pt.'s room changing him, and his room mate came in. he is about early 70's and the only problem he has ,is beginning stages of dementa, w/short term memory loss. he likes to keep the over head light on, which keeps the other pt. awake all night(he has told the nurse this) so, for the last couple of weeks , we have been turning the bathroom light on, and leaving the bathroom door open, and drawing the other guys curtains. he has been fine with this. well on this night we again,explain to him(like we always do, well, he just flipped out!!! i was standing over the other guys bed and this man came up behind me and put his hands around my neck and started choking me, the other girl was rolling his head up, and she jumed up and said 'you can't be doing that' ,then he turned and went after her, hitting her in the face and upper body, well, i got up and got between them two ,blocking his blows, we were not close enough to the call bell(i was going to yank it out of the wall) so i just kept going in the direction of the door, all along yelling, he just kept hitting us both, and all we could do was block his blows, we got at the door, and i was yelling help,help. he got a hold of my left arm and grabed it and twisted it behind my back and pulled up on it really hard, it stopped me dead in my tracks, it hurt so bad. thats when the nurse came running down the hall, telling us to walk away, she said just walk away, of course, i couldn't move. i was in so much pain. he saw her, and turned around and walked back in his room.
i was already on light duty ,from a earlier work-related injury. i have 2 bulging disc in my lower back, l4-5 and l5-s1 plus, one in my neck c6-7 (so, i'm sure that really made the one in my neck better!)
we both filled out an incident report, i ended up going to the er the next day, thank god nothing was broke, just sprained, they put my arm in a sling. which really helped with the pain.
we were both really scared to come back to work the next day, the other girl ended up leaving early b/c she was crying pretty bad, they gave us a hard time, telling us it was part of the job. we are use to getting smacked, hit, spit on, cussed at, but never have we been beat up, this was totally different. it took 2 days for them to even call the doctor, they put him on zprexia(sp) which takes awhile to even get in the system.
they did call the doc back (after i threw a fit) and he has 1/2 mg for ativan prn. he's a pretty tall man, about 170-180lbs a half of mg hasn't even phase him. all they are going to do is watch him. we are not allowed to refuse to work with him. the next day, he went up to the other girl and asked her if she was one of the little devils that beat him up (short term memory??ya, right! ) he also came up to me and said he was sorry for what he did to my arm, i said ok, and then he said "but, you know you brought it on yourself" i said no, mr. *** i didn't. i got in trouble for saying that to him. all we want is, for him to be out of there. we are a nursing home. he takes care of himself. he does everything for himself, he gets a pension, and of course, i;m sure it's turned over to the nh. so they are getting all his money, and we do nothing for him.he needs to be in assisted living facility. what's wrong with this picture??
i live in virginia, can anyone tell me what are our rights as a cna?? we both feel like we are not being supported by our employer. it's just not fair. i have been searching the net for any info(that's how i found this wonderful board) i need some help, and just don't know where to go. i'm afraid they may fire me if i push this, but we did not do anything wrong here. sorry this is so long, but it felt good getting it out, you wouldn't belive how much stress this has caused us both. please, can someone help me. please pm me. thank you for listening!
I'm just curious - I'm a male nursing student 6ft and quite muscular - if someone comes at me like that do I have the option of beating the *hit out of him? A patient probably won't come after me for fear of getting the *hit beat out of him, but to what extent can a nurse defend themself?
I have no patience for people who abuse others - especially a nurse. :angryfire
Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.
Just because you're tall doesn't make you safe. If a resident is going to hit you. he or she might think you are someone or something else. You are not allowed to hit back.
Some of our more harmless looking residents are real sweet and then they're beating the crap out of you so it really doesn't matter what your physical size is.
My wife is a CNA for a nursing home and she had an instance happen today like this. The nursing home has several residents that they know are not in their right mind and are very hostile to the employees that work there. My wife was helping another CNA change one of these residents in particular today and in the middle of the change, he grabbed her by the throat and started choking her. After a while she was able to get free from him but he then started scratching her all over her arms and she is bruised from the neck to the tips of her fingers. When she told her upper management about the situation, they told her "it is your job and there is nothing that you or us can do about it." Yes, I know that she is going to be in situations where she gets some bruises, but what happened today is certainly not part of her job. My concern is that the facility knows about individuals like this and knows that the employees housed there are not trained to handle people in this condition, yet they will verbally tell them there is nothing they can do about it. Since this person is not in their right mind, and has the ability to cause as much harm as was done to my wife, whats to say that the next time this happens this person would not choke an employee to death? I am wanting to look into this legally and see if there is any way that measurements can be put in place so the facility HAS to get rid of these individuals for the safety of fellow residents and employees, but my wife is so stressed and hurt by the situation that she does not want to do anything besides not go back. Do you think that a legal case could be opened that would cause nursing homes that are not equipped to handle these type of residents to have to send them away to, say, a psychiatric facility or at least a facility that is able to handle these individuals? Sorry for the long post, I am just sick and tired of my wife coming home with more and more bruises and after today, I feel that her safety and the safety of her fellow employees is in jepeordy and the facility is not willing to do anything about it.
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
Sounds like a psych eval is in order, perhaps even a transfer to a gero-psych unit to figure out meds and get this fellow stabilized. There IS something that can be done about residents like this, but it can take time and a lot of documentation, and regretfully, sometimes it takes staff getting hurt before anything happens. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like your wife's facility wants to do the legwork involved, so she may be better off going to work for a place that protects its staff better.
Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like your wife's facility wants to do the legwork involved, so she may be better off going to work for a place that protects its staff better.
MichaelSSSS
56 Posts
I'm just curious - I'm a male nursing student 6ft and quite muscular - if someone comes at me like that do I have the option of beating the *hit out of him? A patient probably won't come after me for fear of getting the *hit beat out of him, but to what extent can a nurse defend themself?
I have no patience for people who abuse others - especially a nurse. :angryfire