Tragedy in Melbourne

kiwipsychnurse · Nov 7, 2009

The unit that this patient was housed seems to be a mirror image of my

current work place.

I'm sure many of you heard about what happened at Thomas Embling

Hospital, Victoria.

As confident as I am with my restraint techniques, I think in such a

situation as being confronted by a patient with a knife (or anyone) restraint goes

out the door and survival come to mind.

The only incident that comes to mind is attending an alarm on a

general mental health unit 10 years ago. When I arrived a patient was

holding the OT hostage with a pair of scissors.

Everything I was taught (re: hostage situations) went out the window

and I just grabbed her arm and forced her to drop the scissors. In

hindsight probably the wrong thing to do.

IMO there is very little we can do to prepare ourselves for such

situations. The situations I refer to are the once or twice a career

major situations. Instinct takes over and we deal with it "at the

moment".

Anyone else have a similar situation they would like to share with the

group that classroom/textbook teaching took 2nd place and your

survival instincts kicked in to defuse a incident.

cheers