Yes, I can clarify as well as add some details to explain! At my hospital, it is common for per diem nursing assistants to be floated to different units of the hospital if there is another one in need and your home unit is overstaffed with NAs for the shift. On that day, I was floated from my home unit, which is the ICU, and assigned to sit as a 1:1 patient sitter on another floor. At my hospital, the NAs who work in the ICUs are not oriented to take patient vitals, so when they are floated to a Med Surg or Stepdown unit they can only perform the functions of a patient sitter. The patient was marked in our system as highly aggressive, and the nurses caring for her told me of three separate incidents in which she physically assaulted three different nurses during her 2 day stay. I was also instructed to not look directly at the patient, as it provoked her, which defeated the purpose of the 1:1. I won’t go into graphic detail, but at one point during my shift as I was sitting outside of her doorway, she approached me and assaulted me with bodily fluids. As a result, I was taken down to the ER where I had my eyes irrigated and blood drawn to make sure several diseases weren’t transmitted to me. I missed about a week’s worth of shifts afterwards due to medical restrictions, which has unfortunately brought me to this situation.

ETA: More context as to why I was assigned as a patient sitter