Do you feel safe at work?

[Nurse4babies]

In a Florida hospital today, a man armed with a gun shot and killed a patient and a nurse. There is no indication that he knew either one of his victims. Hospital security (unarmed) arrived and was able to restrain him after he was done shooting.

My question to you all is, how safe do you feel at work on any given day? Over the course of my 20+ years, I've been verbally accosted, physically assaulted and even had a gun pulled on me. I've had armed bounty hunters come to the unit to find fugitive parents as well as gang members looking for the children of another gang member. Hospitals, by and large, don't screen their visitors for weapons. And during the daylight hours, visitors often come and go without even so much as a cursory glance over by security.

Have you ever been in physical danger at work? Was the response adequate? What would you change if you had the ability?

[Horseshoe, BSN, RN]

I've always felt pretty safe, which is not the same thing as thinking nothing bad could ever happen.

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

I feel safe at work. It is more likely that someone could harm me elsewhere for example a mall. I'm not afraid. THe incidents at work were either confused dementia patients or angry patients that lashed out physically. Never had a weapon pulled on me. One time while on a walk in a deserted place a man slammed his brakes and started reaching towards me from the passenger window. I yelled at him to stay away and walked into the street so he'd have to turn his car around. There was some oncoming traffic and luckily he drove away. Another time while walking at that same park a strange man approached me, but another woman with a cellphone out made sure he left me alone. As a woman I'd feel more vulnerable to rape than someone pulling a gun. Though I feel safer now that I'm older as I think I'd be less of a target since they usually choose younger victims.

I do think ER nurses are more at risk than floor nurses and that there should be armed security and police nearby if you live in a crime ridden urban city! I believe some hospitals do have metal detectors in certain high crime cities. Now recently the police are a main target and in many cities they are now going out in pairs and not alone because of all the shooting of police.

To some extent thinking you are a safe is a false sense of security because violence can happen anywhere a mall, a park or festival even hair salons and stores. I think the govt should once again ban assault rifles. I don't understand why the ban was repealed in the first place. How many innocent people have to die before the govt does something! But frankly if the govt failed to act after all those innocent children were killed in Newtown, CT I don't know if anything will touch their hearts. Pretty hardened hearts to refuse to act after that attack! Where will it end? Only God knows!

[Everline]

I work for a woman's reproductive health clinic that has been targeted in the past. So, no I don't feel particularly safe. However, I don't let fear be my foremost emotion on a daily basis. I just stay aware and have a plan if needed.

[RiskManager]

I feel unsafe at times. As the risk/claims manager, I have received several threats over the years from patients/families who did not like the fact I denied their malpractice claim, or they thought the settlement or verdict was not large enough. Then there are the Code Gray/Code Silver events at work that I respond to, and the general angry patient or family member who comes in and wants to talk to someone in Administration. I have often thought that if things go south, I will be long dead before Security or local LE arrives. I have told my wife that if I suddenly end up dead and she did not do it, call the CEO at work and have them go through my office files to see which angry patients I had been dealing with at the time and rule them in/out as suspects.

[WKShadowNP, DNP, APRN]

No. There is a false sense of security but I distinctly have reasons to feel unsafe. The fast track has a floor plan wherein my vantage point has several blind spots. I have had people walk up behind me while I'm charting. I emailed my head of security this weekend because of it.

One of our sitters was assaulted and nearly choked to death. Another (elderly sitter, little lady) was shoved by a psych patient.

One of our registrars was assaulted in the lobby on the way back from the cafeteria by a drunk who was discharged but hadn't left the campus.

Unfortunately the system is reactive instead of proactive.

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

I have always felt that hospitals should not allow just anyone off the street to enter. Our local hospital has two entrances- Main and ER. At neither of these entrances do you see a human face upon entry. You are basically free to go where you like. The CEO (whose office is down a hidden hallway and has not one but two doors to hide behind) ridiculed me for bringing this up during my employment. But then, he'd never found a 'visitor' in non-public areas in the middle of the night.

Back in the day (before 'patient satisfaction') one entered the hospital doors with the name and room number of who one wanted to visit - or one was turned away. Persons without legitimate reasons to be on premises should be escorted out.

[loriangel14, RN]

I feel safe but I live in Canada.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

I work in a unit that is locked down 24/7. After 9pm, there is only 1 door open into the facility, and security has to let you in beyond the ER. Our security guards are armed, and most are moonlighting off duty cops. Even in the downtown area of a city that has its fair share of stabbings, shootings, and other criminal activity, I do what I need to to feel safe. If that means asking security for an escort to my car late at night, they do it.

[WKShadowNP, DNP, APRN]

I work in a unit that is locked down 24/7. After 9pm, there is only 1 door open into the facility, and security has to let you in beyond the ER. Our security guards are armed, and most are moonlighting off duty cops. Even in the downtown area of a city that has its fair share of stabbings, shootings, and other criminal activity, I do what I need to to feel safe. If that means asking security for an escort to my car late at night, they do it.

Hello Ms Rose! :)

I think our security team is getting an overhaul. No more aged pensioners picking up shifts or little ladies just getting some hours. We'll have ex-police and military who meet certain physical agility requirements and some of whom are armed keeping up with our safety. I so look forward to it.

[caffeinatednurse, BSN, RN]

The only place that I ever felt concerned about my surroundings was the ICU that I did my student practicums in nursing school. It was open, in the sense that anyone could walk up the stairs and straight into the ICU (there wasn't even a badge-swipe at the entrance doors). I was really surprised (at the time) by how many non-family members and non-friends would walk through the ICU and try to get information from me about a patient. (None of the other nurses experienced this, but then again, my student nursing uniform was hard to miss.)

Not necessarily related, but I've been sitting with loved ones in the ER (this was a different hospital) and felt totally unsafe, before. More recently, we had just gotten back to a room when an announcement came across the intercom that the ER was on lockdown, that is, nobody could leave and nobody could enter. We later found out that a stabbing victim was right next door to our room. I did feel a little bit better knowing that security was literally right outside our door.

A couple of months later (in the same hospital), when my dad had a heart attack and I found myself camping out in the 'family lounge' during after hours, I was always on guard. Homeless people would walk right in off the street and sleep in the lounge, eat all of the free food and drinks. It's a bit ironic that the only place we could rest in turned out to be the place we had to be most on guard. :(Schedule

[LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN]

I work in one of the poorest, drug infested violent neighborhoods ranked in the nation.

When people threaten to put their effing foot up people's you know what, come after people when they think you are trying to harm their child (then remember they are a foster parent a part of the system so that would mess up their check), come in with ten officers trying to subdue someone high off K-2, a parent jumped in the waiting room in front of sick children, a fight breaking out and the panic button not working, and to the MOST extreme-a father cursing the front desk out and brandishing said weapon to reiterate their plans if their soon isn't seen ASAP...then, you probably KNOW my answer.

Although when my psych pt was getting agitated by their parent, who ALSO was presenting similar agitating behavior and the panic button worked, I had HOPE for my facility.

We secured our ED the other night due to the sensitive nature of one of our trauma victims, and it was pretty safe.

[FurBabyMom, MSN, RN]

I work in the OR. Realistically, I'm more likely to trip over power cords than anything else.

Kidding aside - our unit could be locked 24/7, but it isn't. It's only locked to require badge entry at night. Our facility is fairly secure from the outside, our ED has a a metal detector which patients and visitors have to pass through. The only time I've been in the ED and not had to go through the detector was when I was sent down by my charge nurse because of a work injury. I had no bags with me, was in hospital scrubs with identification. When we have sufficient staff and someone is sent down to the trauma bay to see what arriving traumas are, we do not have to go through the scan process (but we're just considered visiting staff then). We have outside doors that are all badge enabled, and only some doors work after 7pm. There are two doors open from 7p-7a with staffed visitors desks (ED and one of our entrances). The only folks who do not have to "check in" with the desks are staff arriving with a visible facility issued photo ID (we can also use the other badge enabled doors too). I once went to leave work, past one of the desks, having put my badge in my purse. They stopped me, asked to see my badge...I'd been at work over 14 hours, totally didn't think about it, I was busier praying that I wouldn't get called back for the 5 more hours I was on call.

We do not have "security", we have a hospital police department. They are armed (I believe they have tasers and some carry firearms). We also get a fair amount of the incarcerated population, so there are state or federal corrections officers who are armed accompanying their patients. Though, actually, the one incident where staff did have a gun pulled on them it *was* a corrections officer who did it (another story and they're now a ward of the state themselves). I will say, when I worked in another facility, it was the corrections officers, not the inmates that were more concerning to staff. I know that several corrections officers were reported for sexual harassment, etc.

When I worked as a floor nurse, I didn't feel safe. Patients literally threw things, and security would kind of just stand there. If we were lucky we got to dodge being kicked/hit/spit on to admin a PRN order (a lot of our patients had PRN orders for things like geodon, etc). IF we weren't we had to try to keep the patient acting out from hurting themselves, us or their roommate while we waited for things to de-escalate or city police department to arrive (depending on the situation).

When I was an assistant, I had a patient try to kill me (and their nurse, plus the charge nurse) and they took out part of a wall. I believe the facility did press charges. In general I try to forget that night. Never have I been so sure something horrible was going to happen to me. I thought I would be killed. That patient promptly got orders to be sedated/chemically restrained and moved to a higher level of care/someone else was assigned to sit 1:1 with them in ICU. The staffing office/house supervisor did not give me another placement that night but they also didn't make me go home.