Hello everyone,
First of all, big thank you to everyone who has taken time out of their day to read/reply to this. I'm an ER nurse who works in a VERY busy ER and often encounter patients who interfere with other patients' care in one way or another, but a few days ago I had an incredibly stressful experience. One of my patients, who was AAOx4 the entire morning, suddenly became unresponsive after an incredibly large GI bleed bowel movement and a large amount of bright red emesis. This patient was obviously critical to everyone around, which was, surprisingly, not the stressful part.
The problem was the new ETOH patient on the other side of the curtain. This person had 0 compassion for his critical neighbor and continuously screamed for food, attention, and more narcotics. When I (and about half a dozen other staff members) tried to explain he would have to wait until there was time to give him more attention, he began to scream "I'm a fall risk and I'm just going to get out of bed and fall and hurt myself, then you'll all be sorry," along with other alarming statements.
This patient made multiple attempts to get out of bed while screaming "here I go, I'm gunna fall now!" as I was either elbow deep in GI blood, preparing/administering drips, and trying to communicate with the providers to figure out what's next. This forced me to leave my patient countless times. Even though my other coworkers tried to help as much as possible, we had several patients that were just as critical, and we were stretched thin. There were no extra EMTs or security guards to act as a sitter (we never get sitters in the ER, it's not even an option for us) to keep him in bed, or at least stop him from falling.
I wish I could have moved him to a different room (but there were none), let him leave AMA, or put him in an overflow chair, but I knew he was drunk, and he would definitely have ended up hurting himself. That day I was more scared then I ever have been of losing my license or, worse, causing an innocent patient to die because of this ETOH.
My question is what could I have done? Put him in restrains for threatening to indirectly hurt himself? Could I have called the police afterword to press charges for interfering with another patient's treatment? If this ever happened again, what rights do I have (besides refusing the patient) to stop one patient from placing another at risk?
I would really appreciate any advice/ legal knowledge. Thank you all again so much for your time.