What was your scariest threat from a patient or family member

Nurses General Nursing

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Please share how your employee handled the situation and how you dealt with it.

Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).

I haven't been threatened much but I was cursed by an old Romanian lady who said that my "woman parts would dry up and I would never again know the love of a man.

Hppy

Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).
I had a person call me to ask about a patient (let's call him Mr. Smith), stating he was Mr. Smith's son. I said I was unable to give him information about any patients over the phone but he could try calling Mr. Smith's wife. He started screaming at me and asked me for my name. He said he was going to get me fired and slammed the phone on me. Mrs. Smith happened to be in Mr. Smith's room so I went in to ask if she had a son and she said yes. I told her she may be receiving a call from an irrate son but I can't give information over the phone. She flipped out on me and started screaming at me. I told my charge and we ended up having to call the house supervisor.

That is the only time someone threatened me with anything. That was an interesting patient anyway. Mr. Smith punched me on another shift, but I don't consider that a threat. That is something entirely different.

I handle these situations differently - I will tell son, daughter etc.. that I I can't violate the patients privacy but if they give me their name and number and if the patient is there in the facility I will pass the information on to him/her. Then I go to patient's room and ask if they have son/daughter. what their name is and if I can have them sign a release for verbal information. Once I have consent then I can update the family and everyone is happy.

Hppy

Specializes in Med-Tele; ED; ICU.

I inherited an intoxicated patient who was in restraints. He began demanding to be freed and permitted to leave. I informed him that the physician had deemed him to be lacking capacity to make that decision at the moment and that he would be released once he was sober and cleared by the psychiatric team.

Over time, he became more and more demanding and finally began to threaten me. It peaked with him declaring that upon his release he intended to get a firearm and kill me as well as my family.

I responded by notifying the filling out an incident report, telling the charge nurse, and calling the police.

The charge nurse replied, "OK, what do you want me to do about it?"

I replied, "Nothing, really, but our new zero-tolerance policy dictates that I inform you so now you're informed."

The cops showed up and replied, "Well, he's drunk. We can't do anything."

I replied, "Well, drunk people have been known to make irrational decisions."

I also filed the IR and heard nothing more of it.

Even as the guy began to sober up, he continued to threaten me. I finally replied quietly, "I believe you... you don't need to continue to say it... you've made your intent perfectly clear and I believe you completely... and since I believe you, if I ever see you again, I will be prepared to act immediately and decisively."

He did a bit of a double-take and then threatened again with a bit more intensity. I just stared at him and said, "I know... I believe you... I'll be ready"

He started to back-peddle a bit and said, "What do you mean?"

I just repeated myself, "Sir, I believe every word that you've been saying... and I intend to act upon those words should our paths ever cross."

I guess he decided that I was serious and continued to back off. He said, "Hey, I didn't mean anything by it."

I replied, "You don't need to say another word about it... I believed you and I still do."

When it became time to loosen the restraints, I held a high-intensity flashlight behind my back ready to temporarily blind him but simply told him, "I'm going to loosen the restraints... I still believe what you said and if you make any sudden moves or acts which I perceive to be aggressive, I will respond appropriately. If you so much as twitch while I'm standing by you, I'll have no choice. Do you understand?"

He remained calm and compliant and was discharged shortly thereafter.

I've never seen him again... nor did I hear anything from my IR, the cops, nor my charge nurse.

Specializes in Geriatrics, Dialysis.

Fortunately I've never had to deal with a situation where I felt anybody's safety was in danger. But then I've always worked LTC which is not really an atmosphere where one would expect intentional violence. Dementia related violence, sure. I've been hit, kicked, bit etc numerous times over my career but when the perpetrator is an elderly person suffering from advanced dementia I don't really consider that a violent act against me. The one case that in hindsight that could have been scary was a cute little gal that regularly threatened to shoot people. Of course nobody took it seriously, we all kind of joked about it as the threats sounded kind of funny coming from this adorable, tiny 90+ year old woman. The scary came in after she died. When cleaning out her belongings to ship them to a family member a loaded gun was found in her purse. We never inventoried items from purses/wallets and had no clue that gun was there all the time this lady was with us. I guess she really could have shot us at any time if she had thought to grab that gun out of her bag.

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I haven't been threatened much but I was cursed by an old Romanian lady who said that my "woman parts would dry up and I would never again know the love of a man.

Hppy

Hopefully she was wrong.

Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.
Hopefully she was wrong.

At least she put some thought into it!

Specializes in ICU, LTACH, Internal Medicine.

When one dude, after I told him that I am very much allergic to certain foodstuff, intentionally grabbed my hand with his own one thickly smeared in that substance.

To tell the truth, in less than 10 min he was staying there, close to fainting, pale as a wall and spitting out an endless stream of apologies. He most definitely expected whatever but the horror movie' scene which super-acute local allergic reaction and following Rapid Responce actions in the hallway looks like for a lay person. Later on, they brought me apples every time they visited :)

Re. management, the patient was never assigned to me again and I was pretty happy wirh that.

Specializes in Transitional Nursing.
"I'm going to fix all of her problems -- and yours too -- with this." (Shows me his .357 revolver)

Manager excused the behavior but called security. Security called the police who searched his vehicle and found several long guns and several handguns. He was arrested and carted off to jail . . . but was back visiting again by the end of my shift. And I had to take care of the patient the next day as well. Security guards hung around until shift change (for them) and then stopped accompanying him on his visits because "He says he's not going to do anything."

Another time, I was caring for a prisoner from a federal penitentiary. I was young and stupid; he was in his 70s and dying. He had two guards. Special permission was given for his son to visit. Son is also prisoner at the federal penitentiary and came with his own two prison guards. I was concentrating on de-clogging a feeding tube with my back to the door when I suddenly found myself thrown to the ground with a very large prison guard on top of me. A home-made machete clattered to the ground about an inch from my nose. Turns out the son was eager to hasten my patient's demise, and was about to go through me to get to him. After it was all over, the guard who tackled me (probably about the age I am now) kept telling me over and over that after forty years in corrections, he had never been so frightened in his life. He had never been so scared, he had never seen anything like it. I was pretty shook up myself. We took a few minutes to debrief each other while we drank a cup of coffee (probably not the best choice of beverage under the circumstances.) I understand there were some changes in the prison's policies for hospitalized patients after that, but I couldn't say what they were. I finished my shift with the same patients, and my manager put a write up in my file about grace under pressure or courage while under fire or some such.

I've never turned my back on a prisoner, a prison guard or any visitor that made me feel "hinky" again. Served me well in later years when some out of control federal agents threatened an NP with their firearms.

Dear God! You should have had a stiff coctail after that night, not coffee! I would have pooped my pants or passed out. Or both.

You should really write a book, Ruby.

Specializes in Transitional Nursing.
Fortunately I've never had to deal with a situation where I felt anybody's safety was in danger. But then I've always worked LTC which is not really an atmosphere where one would expect intentional violence. Dementia related violence, sure. I've been hit, kicked, bit etc numerous times over my career but when the perpetrator is an elderly person suffering from advanced dementia I don't really consider that a violent act against me. The one case that in hindsight that could have been scary was a cute little gal that regularly threatened to shoot people. Of course nobody took it seriously, we all kind of joked about it as the threats sounded kind of funny coming from this adorable, tiny 90+ year old woman. The scary came in after she died. When cleaning out her belongings to ship them to a family member a loaded gun was found in her purse. We never inventoried items from purses/wallets and had no clue that gun was there all the time this lady was with us. I guess she really could have shot us at any time if she had thought to grab that gun out of her bag.

OMG! How does that even happen? I mean, I don't think we go through purses either, but HOLY SHITAKE MUSHROOMS!

Thank goodness being an OR nurse for 26 years has saved me from any threats from patients.

I was about 2 months in to a new job in home care. I was assigned to a patient needing diabetic teaching d/t a h/o non-adherence. I showed up to the patients home, he was a paranoid schizophrenic that clearly had not been taking his medication. He (luckily for me) did not let me into his house so I attempted, to the best of my ability, to teach him how to use his glucometer, out on his porch. I expressed my concerns that this patient was not appropriate for our department and would benefit from being transferred to Behavioral health. I was instructed to continue seeing him and on our 3rd visit he was in a full psychiatric breakdown. He screamed at me, told me he was my father and that he was going to kill me. He chased me off his porch, (I've never run so fast in my life) and I outran him to my car. I called my supervisor, in tears, to explain what happened and that I was not comfortable seeing psych patients anymore and they did discharge the patient from services immediately. That was the scariest by far but there have been quite a few other incidents.

Specializes in NICU.

Not me fortunately, but one of my coworkers recently looked after a baby whose mother told her that if the baby died in her care, my coworker would be impregnated and the mother would take the resulting child. No idea how she intended to carry this out, but how unhinged do you have to be to even think of something like that?

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