Do you feel that your emergency department has enough safety measure to prevent assaults against nurses?
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I sometimes wonder if
I sometimes wonder if there's such a thing as enough safety measures. I think that it's important for the nurse to be really sensitive to the patient's mood and remove themselves from the room if the patient is getting increasingly agitated. I find that younger nurses (in age and experience) are less likely to recognize when someone's getting wound up enough to do something dangerous.
Then there's demented patients who can easily lash out with no provocation whatsoever... how do you safeguard against that?
I think that the hospital has a duty to ensure safe staffing levels and to ensure that security staff are well staffed to respond to calls for help. We often depend a lot on our security officers to remove or restrain offenders, and if they're tied up elsewhere at the hospital and not able to attend, and the police do sometimes take time to show up, it can end up being a very dangerous situation.
Curious to see what other think of this and what suggestions can be made to make our nurses safer at the workplace.
Rural Areas
While I think it's imperative to remain cognizant of the potential threat of each and every patient, unfortunately some rural facilities provide no security. The facility in which I am currently employeed only has security available at certain times throughout the week and are not specifically trained to deal with volatile situations. That in conjuntction with the lack of administration's support of security measures can make for a frustrating and dangerous working environment.
RBeavRN
I think that it's important
I think that it's important for the nurse to be really sensitive to the patient's mood and remove themselves from the room if the patient is getting increasingly agitated. I find that younger nurses (in age and experience) are less likely to recognize when someone's getting wound up enough to do something dangerous.
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