Being assaulted by a patient

[Sjade]

Where I work currently as an assistant nurse there is one ward for acute care of the elderly we get majority of dementia patients a lot of which are agressive.

I have always though I am a good judge and know how to react if one becomes agressive and therefor with all my interactions with previously agressive patients I have never been assaulted.

Tonight I was on this ward, and it happened.

it was 8PM at night and my behavioural patient had been asleep when an emergency call went off waking her up. The nurses all ran to the room where the emergent was happening and I thought I'll just pop my head in to reassure her everything's okay. She was just climbing out of bed as I reassured her and she turned and began to abuse me. Again, standing in the door way I tried to let her know you're in hospital everything is okay there's just a patient who is sick the alarm will stop shortly.

She continues to verbally abuse me and tells me to get out of her house. "Okay" I say as I start to walk down the corridor away from here, but she's behind me. Before I can even realise she grabs hold of my hair and I turn instinctively, she swings her hand up and hits/grabs onto my face. I grab hold of her hands and eventually get away, and turn to see the RN coming to intervene. I ask I'll call a code black (agressive patient) but she tells me to wait so I do.

Eventually the patient calms down and goes back to bed. The RN comes and asks if I'm okay, and I say yes I'm just shocked and explain what exactly happened.

That was it, that was end of that conversation and it never happened..

my heart was racing, it's so normal on this ward that it's as if it's just part of their job.

I tell 3 other AINs and all they can say is "oh hope I don't have her tomorrow". This is the same ward where I once called a code black on a patient who was hitting and kicking a nurse IN another patients bed, once he stopped she cancelled the code and went along as if nothing had happened.

I cant help but have on the back of my mind that I didn't fill out any report, I was just in shock and honestly feeling defensive as I had to go back and sit outside her room to 1:1 nurse her. I wrote the incident in the behaviour chart of the patient but the nurse in charge was in the room where emergency was so I couldn't notify her.

i feel as if I needed to debrief but no one was there to support me.

[LovingLife123]

I was in shock after my first assault. It rattled me for the rest of my day. I also had a very threatening situation happen that had some lasting impressions on me as well.

The combative patients don't bother me so much anymore as I'm better prepared mentally for them. I've learned how to always never turn my back or give them an arm to grab, and also that they are not in their right mind. It's the disease process, not the true personality of the patient.

But the first time, was so shocking and upsetting. It took me a few days to come to terms with it and that it would happen to me again. And I was correct.

It's the mentally with it ones and their family members I have a hard time with on the assaulting and threatening. Those people should be in jail.

[CapeCodMermaid, RN]

I'm sorry this happened to you. It seems facilities take even the worst behaved patients with no clue how to really deal with them.

[RNGummy40]

Good Morning Sjade.

I am sorry that you were assaulted. Yes, you should communicate with your nursing supervisor that you were assaulted and your facility should provided documentation for personal injury in addition to filling out an incident report.

When the incident happened did you use any form of of deescalation, such as CPI, Handel with Care, or MOAB? OSHA and the ANA require facilities to provided training on verbal deescalation and physical protection. Health care workers need to know how to minimize personal harm and it is the facilities responsibility to provide training.

[JohnHood, BSN]

You should never cancel a "code black" after it's called. Every case of violence should be investigated to see if it could have been avoided, to monitor for both staff and patient injuries, to see if the patient is in the right place and to see if the police should be involved. Violence against staff is serious and should be treated as such by staff and management.