Nurse Self-Defense Class

[danu3]

If there were such a class as a "Nurse Self-Defense" class, would you take it?

A "Nurse Self-Defense" class teaches a nurse how to deal with physically violent patients basically. But it does have other characteristics like it will teach how to do minimum damage (preferably no damage) to the patient in the process of defending one self. The techniqes being taught are independent of the size of the person, so basically a 4 foot 10 nurse can bring down a 6 ft 10 person with minimum damage to both the patient and the nurse.

Probably it will involve lots of holds, locks, and maybe some thorwing techniques from different martial arts. Oh yes, lots of training on how to get out of the way when you see a punch or whatever comming. Maybe even learn how to use some unobstrusive weapon like kubotan (a little 6 inch or so stick you can carry on your keychain).

Basically it has to be something very practical that one can learn to use in a hurry. The class has to be design with the nurses in mind just like classes design specifically design for police officers in term of use of force.

-Dan

[missmercy]

Interesting thought! In a society where violence is more and more prevelant, being able to protect ones self is a major concern. I had a very bad experience when I was 16 - fortunately had a big brother who was into martial arts -- learned quickly that I was capable of defending myself -- which gave me back my freedom, my confidence and my life!!

Any course (in my humble opinion) should include techniques to de-escalte situations without having to use any physical force if possible. Many of the martial arts experts will tell students that your goal should be to avoid the confrontations if possible and use the force and skills of fighting only if needed.

Anger management, control issues as well as professionalism and good communication skills go hand in hand with effective conflict resolution all of which need to be part of a person's self defense plan!

[danu3]

Any course (in my humble opinion) should include techniques to de-escalte situations without having to use any physical force if possible. Many of the martial arts experts will tell students that your goal should be to avoid the confrontations if possible and use the force and skills of fighting only if needed.

Anger management, control issues as well as professionalism and good communication skills go hand in hand with effective conflict resolution all of which need to be part of a person's self defense plan!

Very good point. A class like this should definitely include techniques to de-escalate. I wonder if we can borrow some of the police training and do some modification to it since they do have to learn how to de-escalate.

The other thought I have is that these kind of classes, one needs to renew it every so often because it does involve practice.

-Dan

[missmercy]

Great! You get it together and I will use it with my staff!! I'll give you the byline!!

Seriously, given our society, terrorism etc. Nurses have to be diplomats, body guards (for themselves and others), watch dogs, business geniuses and counselors -- and that's on a slow day!!!

[danu3]

Great! You get it together and I will use it with my staff!! I'll give you the byline!!

Seriously, given our society, terrorism etc. Nurses have to be diplomats, body guards (for themselves and others), watch dogs, business geniuses and counselors -- and that's on a slow day!!!

Yep, have to be everything it seemed like.

You know something... if this ever become a requirement, you think it will draw more people into nursing? I mean learning special self defense might be of interests to all kinds of people, male and females, young and old, tall and short... etc.

-Dan

[danu3]

I was fooling around with this ieea more in details. I was thinking what type of martial art will help. The closest one is Aikido where it is almost a purely defensive art (if someone do not attack, you don't do anything). It involves lots of locks (some potentially very painful ones) and throws. A big part of it is learning how to get out of the line of attack and set yourself up for a throw or a lock of some kind. At a higher level, it involves neutralizing multiple attacks. In theory, the highest rank people there can neutral attacks with minimum to no damage to the attacker. It has a philosophy of preserving life of the attackers.

Something like Karate might not work as well because lots of the techniques may be too damaging to the attackers.

Now for the problem part of Aikido. Lots of styles has a very heavy duty spiritual dimention to it. Basically it is Eastern spirituality. If your faith is Islam, Christian, Judaism, or just have no interests in spirituality, you are going to feel very uncomfortable with Aikido. Another problem is that it takes a long time to be really good at it for most people. Nurses need something quick and down at the level of the "streets".

Another system is the Kubotan (or persuader sometime it is call) which is invented by a Karate expert for undercover police officer actually. It involve using a small weapon of about 5 to 6 inches long. There are many styles of it and some even double up as a mini-flashlight. Most people just use it as a key chain kind of thing and carries with them all the time. In terms of weapon, this one does not look like a weapon. And if a little kid accidently picks it up, it is totally safe. And yes, you can even carry it through the airport since it is either a flashlight or made out of plastic. And now there are some training for the general public. It taks a few hours to train with no martial art experience and it is one of the down at the trenches type of system. I don't have actual experience with it because there are no training where I am. This is appealing because it takes only a few hours to train and no martial arts experience. The techniques are not leathal (although it is very painful to the attacker; well, if used wrong, it can do some heavy damage).

There are many sites on this and I am not sure how to evaluate the quality of them (anyone with good martial arts or with experience with this, tips?).

Take a look at one of the site at

http://www.wvi.com/~timothyw/OCFR/oregon%20safety%20defense.htm

Do a find on "Kubotan". You'll see it talks about getting out of head locks, choke holds, grabs... which might be something that a nurse might run into.

Also not that expensive, $75. There is an official headquater down at LA somewhere and for the life of me, I can't find it.

I've heard some local police department actually offer Kubotan to the general public sometimes. But I have not seen it where I am.

There is another system which I forgotten the name, I think it was popular at the East Coast at one point, the weapon involve is basically a pen flash light, sort of like the Kubotan, but not exactly as the techniques are different.

There is another interesting one which is

http://www.impactbayarea.org. This is down at the "street" level for women. I don't think the techniques there will work for the nurses given it may be too leathal in some cases. However, their concept and the way they train is good. What would be interesting is if they are willing to modify their program to be specifically for nurses (male and female).

Now, these are all in the case when a nurse is already being attack. As previous posted by missmercy, this program should include a good dose of how to de-escalate also. Actually the police can potentially help if they are willing because they would have training in this area.

-Dan

[danu3]

I would like to summarized the main characteristics of a good "Nurse Self-Defense" program. That is, if you are ask to design such a program, what will you look for? Feel free to add more points or to modify them. This is a first cut:

• Potential violent recognition
  
• De-escalation techniques
  
  • By yourself if nobody is around at the moment
    
  • Doing it with a team. How to de-escalate as a team with your colleagues
    
  • Learn to call for backup early. The police department where I am, they always call for backup when they pull someone over, even if it is an old man or woman.
    

  [*]Legal aspects

  [*]Public relation aspects - if a nurse is attacked and the nurse use one of the techniques and the patient sue, and the media got hold of it, what should be presented? Or on a positive note, some reporter just want to do a piece on nurse's self defence, what should be presented?

  [*]Physical Techniques

  • At the "street" level
    
  • No martial art experience required
    
  • Size and strength independent (a 4 foot 10 person can bring down a 6 foot 5 person)
    
  • Training duration is short. In another word, it won't take years to able to use it at the "street" level. Preferably only take hours or days. Ok if it require recertification every so often. Better yet, make it a CE.
    
  • Minimum damage to attacker. This is good for legal reason and it is in line with nursing philosophy.
    
  • Teaches what to do also if your colleages is in physical trouble, how do you help?
    
  • Identify most common types of attacks. Arm lock, head holds, flying fist ... ? I doubt there are very few high kicks.
    
  • What to do if the attacker uses a potential weapon as there are potential things in the room which can be use as a weapon. This can go both ways if a nurse is taught how to use stuff in the room also as a defensive weapon. I don't know, here is a wild example, the patient somehow got a hold of a syringe and try to stab the nurse and he is blocking the exit to the door. The nurse might grab the food tray as a shield (assuming it is not paper) and use the furniture in the room for shielding and just create obstacles for the attackers until help comes (probably should yell and make as much noice as possible in the mean time to attract attention so help can come).
    
  • Sort of first line self defense in the sense of preventing and getting yourself out of trouble until help can come. For example, if you are under a head lock and your mouth is covered, you are not going to be able to make a call to get help until you get out of it first.
    
  • Minimum sets of techniques that can be apply to many situations. Don't want to learn 300 different techniques.
    

Ok, feel free to make it better.

-Dan

ps. The above sort of got me thinking not so much "self"-defense as more a "team"-defense where everyone are trained to help each other as a team.

[missmercy]

Dan -

Great ideas!! Will check with some of our local police and martial arts experts and see what they would suggest too.

Avoidance of the necessity is primary in my thinking -- however, there are always those unavoidable instances where intervention of some sort is necessary! It's too bad that it makes so much sense to have a course like this -- but lets face it -- life is rougher now than it used to be.

The facility where I am now has security officers they will escort you to your car after dark, will assist in any of our crisis situations and are great guys -- I am not sure what level of training they get -- that's on my list to check out too!

However, the facility where I was prior to this one -- our maintanence guys were our security guys -- they would sit in their truck and watch you cross the parking lot -- but would be of very little use if an emergency occured.

Keep thinking!! I will see if I can get any info from this area of the world and share it with you!

[danu3]

Dan -

Avoidance of the necessity is primary in my thinking -- however, there are always those unavoidable instances where intervention of some sort is necessary! It's too bad that it makes so much sense to have a course like this -- but lets face it -- life is rougher now than it used to be.

Prevention is always the best. But in reality, sometimes things happens and everyone done all they can already. So when things happens, people need to do what to do to minimize damage and be as safe as possible.

The facility where I am now has security officers they will escort you to your car after dark, will assist in any of our crisis situations and are great guys -- I am not sure what level of training they get -- that's on my list to check out too!

Hmmm... wonder any of their training can be modified in a nursing environment?

However, the facility where I was prior to this one -- our maintanence guys were our security guys -- they would sit in their truck and watch you cross the parking lot -- but would be of very little use if an emergency occured.

I guess that is better than nothing. So they sit in the truck nice and safe and you walk across the parking lot? :) I guess if there is an emergency, they could run over to the attacker or something... :)

Here is another thought, where you work, do they have a "safety policy" or something like that? If so, can you work it into the "safety policy" somehow? Oh the dreaded JACCHO (sp), do they have a "safety" or "security" thing they are suppose to look it? If so, can you work that in?

About the martial arts stuff... the police do not follow a particular martial art style. They basically use techniques that are proven on the street and fits their philosophy, and they don't care about where it comes from. So Nursing Defense probably should be similar in the sense it is not dedicated to a particular style, it uses whatever techniques that are proven in real life situation and it fits the nursing philosophy. Maybe we'll have a new martial art call Nursido :rotfl:

-Dan

[danu3]

Ok, here are more random ideas.

• See if there are some graduate students in nursing who is willing to a thesis on this topic. Espcially students who have some kind of martial art training. Or students who were former police officers or was in the military. The reason is that these research papers can potentially be your "bullets" in starting some kind of program at your place. You do your own research papers too, but the more papers we have from other people, the better.
  

• This is way in the future... After a program started, there should be some process in place to collect data (don't know what kind of data yet) so that one can do these "continuous improvement" stuff. Also these data can be the source of more papers (more seeds).
  

-Dan

[RN4NICU, LPN, LVN]

You mention Aikido as being good, but the spiritual dimension possibly offensive. I have some previous training with Hapkido and, if there is a spiritual component, it was not presented. It sounds similar to what you described. It focuses on pressure points, throws, locks, and the like - there was a lot of teaching about knife defense and multiple attacker defense as well. It contained much useful information that anyone would do well to know, not just nurses, but it appealed to me as I am small in stature and frame and was worried I would appear to be "an easy target" to any would-be attacker.

One word of caution - the principles behind the movements are sound, but unless they are performed perfectly and the attacker does not have a clue what you are doing, they are ineffective. If the attacker knows what is coming and resists or counters the movement (how many of them are just going to cooperate?), you could make things worse for yourself. It seems that the main thing that made it effective was that, when performed correctly, everything happens so fast that the attacker is caught off-guard. In other words, you'd better know your stuff very well and be able to do it without having to think about it. It also took a great deal of precision. If you apply pressure here, here, here, or here (all within 1/4 inch of your intended spot), doesn't hurt. But when you hit the actual pressure point - YEOW!

[danu3]

You mention Aikido as being good, but the spiritual dimension possibly offensive. I have some previous training with Hapkido and, if there is a spiritual component, it was not presented. It sounds similar to what you described. It focuses on pressure points, throws, locks, and the like - there was a lot of teaching about knife defense and multiple attacker defense as well. It contained much useful information that anyone would do well to know, not just nurses, but it appealed to me as I am small in stature and frame and was worried I would appear to be "an easy target" to any would-be attacker.

I am not familiar with Hapkido, but it sounded like one possibility as it sounded more like it is more spiritually "neutral".

One word of caution - the principles behind the movements are sound, but unless they are performed perfectly and the attacker does not have a clue what you are doing, they are ineffective.

There seemed to be one of the problems with lots of the Martial Arts. You need to be really good at it in order to be effective. Ideally, we need something that has a pretty big margin of error where one can do it sort of wrong and it still works. Also another problem with lots of martial arts is that it takes a while to get half way decent.

As stated earlier, we need something that can be learned fairly quick. Has to be very practical and down at the "street" level. We don't want the techniques to be leathal however if at all possible. Want minimum damage to the attacker (we might be the one who is going to patch up the attacker afterwards and might get into legal problem for "excessive" force).

Question: how long did it take you to become "effective" in Hapkido?

-Dan