Nurse safety

Your institution should have some policies or protocols. Have tried looking for any? In any case you have to protect yourself always.

Like I said in my post; I wasn't asking for advice.

I was more inquiring if people knew the laws protecting them in their state.

https://www.ena.org/government/State/Documents/StateLawsWorkplaceViolenceSheet.pdf.

The laws don't matter if your employer won't enforce them or there is a culture of not reporting patients or calling the police.

In my state it is a felony to assault a healthcare worker in the ED. To my knowledge that's the extent of the law.

Short answer to what we do--put 'em in 4-point leathers.

I am among those non-ED RNs. My hospital has a behavioral emergency "code" which we call if a pt is becoming aggressive or threatening. Psych staff and security respond, much like MDs/RRT/ICU charge RN/etc. respond to a code blue; their behavioral "crash cart" includes leathers. I love that staff safety is such a priority!

A lady at my job was just suspended for using restraints on a pt who had assaulted 5 people in 1 shift, then attacked her then turned away from her. Admin said she was not supposed to restrain him because he had stopped for the moment.

^^^ That's terrible.

One place I worked at me and other staff were told "you should move out of the way of the fists." This is after reporting being punched while stand pivoting a patient that is unable to hold his own weight. Which then left us dumbfounded at if we were really supposed to drop the patient onto a hard floor and possibly break bones to duck away from those fists.