Assaults in the ER
by Anne Kelly KFYR TV
Posted on 8/12/2009
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Any time a person ends up in the emergency room it usually means they`re having a pretty bad day. Some people keep it to themselves, while some take it out on others, specifically, the ER nurses.
A recent survey of nearly 3,500 emergency nurses found that more than half have been physically assaulted on the job. It’s a problem that happens even here in Bismarck, but nurses say aside from physical assault, there’s an even more common problem they have to handle daily.
They may work in different buildings, but emergency nurses at both Medcenter One and St. Alexius have the same stories. They or their coworkers have been spit on, shoved, kicked, even had patients throw a swing.
“It makes your role tough, it`s frustrating,” says Craig Serr, the clinical coordinator at Medcenter One.
Even more frustrating say nurses, is the number of times they are verbally assaulted while on the job. The Emergency Nurses Association survey found as many as a fifth of ER nurses have been verbally assaulted in the past three years…in Bismarck the problem isn’t any better.
“There`s a lot of swearing and just almost disrespect, I guess,” says St. Alexius ER nurse Courtney Woodbury. “But there is a lot of verbal abuse, especially if people don’t get the treatment they think they deserve.”
Verbal abuse, from patients, family members, every day people in high stress situations.
“You know each one of us has our own thresholds, if that threshold is reached and we get pushed over the edge, each one of us has our breaking points,” says Serr.
“A lot of the time they’re intoxicated and have some sort of chemical on board,” says Medcenter One ER nurse Tracey Fossum. And sometimes patients have a psychiatric problem. Nurses say they’re not only disrespected at times, they’re also threatened.
“A lot of nurses feel unsafe walking to their cars at night,” Woodbury says.
Every time a verbal or physical assault occurs in either hospital’s ER, security is called. The emergency department at Medcenter One has to call security so consistently that the hospital is employing a guard specifically for the ER.
But ramped up security won’t necessarily solve a problem Medcenter says has progressively gotten worse over the years. They say as our population grows, so will the ER assaults.
Medcenter administrators say it doesn’t happen often, but sometimes, patients feel so bad about being uncooperative in the emergency room that they write an apology letter after they are released.