Beat up by a resident, what to do??

[MichaelSSSS]

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

[CapeCodMermaid, RN]

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.

[nurse555]

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.

[jtaustin351]

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.

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

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.