Safety in todays hospital environments

[motivated2nurse]

After hearing the report about the doc at John Hopkins getting shot, I wondered how many nurses feel unsafe at work? I mean we treat the community and it's victims daily and with that comes all the baggage. Have you felt in danger of a patient, a situation, or family member. We often go on lockdown when a shooting victim comes in, but what about random acts of violence? I quess I never really gave it a second thought until all the news reports. Isnt it a shame that a place of healing cant be a safe haven?

[walk6miles]

It is probably more important to know who among HR and administration an experienced nurse must protect herself from.

[mskate]

I have seriously worried about this and I have been in the position to have to put the unit into lock-down due to violent visitors. One time, we had visitors literally break down the locked door to the ICU because they were too upset about their family member's outcome.

I FIRMLY believe *all* hospitals should have metal detector screenings and ID checks on all visitors coming into the hospital. It is dangerous, we have patients who are there for many many reasons, often times as a result of violent crimes, we have people who are put under enormous stress, being told about patient outcomes that can be devastating.

A person I worked with once had their patient *shot to death* in the ICU bed when the nurse was at the med station as a result of gang retaliation because it was an open ICU.

Unfortunately, no one will take it seriously until it is far too late.

[RiverNurse]

I had a "friend" of a patient threaten to throw me against a wall - then continued to say to one of my co-workers that he "had something in the room" and that he was "going to blow someone away" and referred to me specifically.

The situation was resolved and no one was harmed - evidently he didn't have a gun - but nevertheless, since that time - I've felt more and more uncomfortable about going to work.

Rivernurse

[C_perugiae]

This particular news item has me thinking about picking my specialty according to how easily people can find me in the hospital, instead of where I think would be the most interesting. Maybe I'll work in the OR... they're hard to navigate unless you know exactly where you're going!

It scares me that people now think that the solution to every problem is to shoot a bunch of people.

[EMSnut45, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

I work in an inner city hospital in a bad neighborhood. With the exception of peds, mother baby, and NICU, our units are not locked. There are open visiting hours.

Hospital administration recently decided that screening visitors and giving out passes is "unfriendly," and has done away with it.

Our ICU gets frequent irrate family members upset about their loved ones condition, and it is up to us nurses to handle it.

Yup, I feel real safe...

To be honest, I felt safer working in the jail!!

[Work in Progress]

I hardly ever feel safe at work. I work in an inner city hospital whose unofficial specialty is dealing with violent trauma. The ED has metal detectors, mom/baby/L&D/peds are all locked units, but the rest of the hospital is completely open.

I was actually a bit worried about going back to work after the JH shootings, because just that day I had a very upset family that believed the imminent death of their family member was the fault of the nursing staff and being covered up in some hospital wide conspiracy. Anyhow, I was a bit afraid one of them would get ideas from that shooting.

I have never been assaulted or threatened by a visitor, but have by A&Ox3 patients. I had a man actually throw the over-the-bed table at me and the MD when he found out he was getting discharged. I had another patient scratch the crap out of my arm (drew blood and left a nasty scar) because I wouldn't give her "just a little snack" when she was NPO. Neither of these people were withdrawing or had mental health issues.

They have finally started buckling down on some of these behaviors in patients (and in visitors as well). We have a behavioral contract that a patient gets with the first instance of threatening behavior. If a (with it) patient or visitor has assaulted a staff member, they are no longer allowed to be treated at our hospital or our medical clinics unless it is a life threatening emergency. This threat has actually helped a lot because the population we serve (we are a safety net hospital) really have no other options. We also get training on de-escalation and escaping bad situations.

It is really unfortunate that people believe that they can lash out like this and it will solve their problems. It also sucks that people like this get reinforcement for their behavior. If they curse the loudest, threaten, spit, punch they usually get what they want just because we don't want to have to deal with it.

[happy2learn]

We have a metal detector that comes on every night (kinda wished it came on during the day, but not that big of a deal)We have armed security. Every person has to come through that metal detector at night, the other doors to the hospital are locked (the other entrance is open to anyone during the day).

No visitor goes back without a pass.

Also, any person coming into the hospital as a result of violence or believed to be a result of violence has a special code in the system. When we see this code, we do not take visitors back. We send these people to the Social Workers office, just telling them they are not in our system.

Just a few weeks ago, a person came in as a result of a stabbing. This man came in, nice as can be, wanting to see her. Sent him to social work. Come to find out, this was her attacker coming to finish the job! Turned around and he was being handcuffed.