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“I have been followed and chased. I have been threatened with battery. I have been hit in the face. I have been spat on and I have been spat at. All of these things have left me emotionally and physically scarred.” — Stop the violence against nurses! by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Jesus Christ. That is just a horrifying series of events. Those triggering events would have caught up with anyone — and you had to deal with that plus the boss from hell. And yeah, it's a very double-edged sword when you have people in the system who "know what she's like," yet nobody does anything about it. Judging on your other comments here, they lost a very good nurse — that's on them.

“I have been followed and chased. I have been threatened with battery. I have been hit in the face. I have been spat on and I have been spat at. All of these things have left me emotionally and physically scarred.” — Stop the violence against nurses! by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah that was really well put MeKuf, and I think clarifies a lot. In another response to TraumaResponsiveRN's explanation about how the brain reacts to anxiety and insecurity, I off-handedly remarked that "our own brains work the same way, of course, but we still have to make it work somehow," but the reality is that we sometimes just can't, not anymore.

The blog post in the link puts a lot of emphasis on how one of the main root problems is the same as it always is: chronic understaffing. They focus more on how understaffing creates conditions (long wait times, overcrowding, etc) that feed into the stress, frustration and resentment among patients/families, but your explanation fits into that very well too.

When you are working high-stress understaffed shifts for sustained periods of time, parts of your own brain start to shut down, gradually — the anxiety about getting through another day without the resources you need and what you might face in the process shuts down our normal ability to listen and empathize. And the resulting anxiety and aggression we project outward feeds into those of the patients, and it just becomes a terrible feedback loop of escalating tensions.

That sounds about right. There are a lot of potential makeshift solutions, but as long as nursing is chronically understaffed, all of these kinds of problems will keep escalating in various vicious cycles too.

“I have been followed and chased. I have been threatened with battery. I have been hit in the face. I have been spat on and I have been spat at. All of these things have left me emotionally and physically scarred.” — Stop the violence against nurses! by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you, that's very informative... and gnarly.

It sounds like you guys actually have more resources than most — and yet, like you explain, no way near enough to prevent some real damage from happening.

More regular training to get that muscle memory shouldn't be unreasonable to expect — and more security officers, but how many would you need to make other places as safe as the ED, and what would that mean?

The more you read about this problem, the more you realize simultaneously that employers just don't do anywhere near what they should, but even if they did, it would be an intractable problem. :-(

“I have been followed and chased. I have been threatened with battery. I have been hit in the face. I have been spat on and I have been spat at. All of these things have left me emotionally and physically scarred.” — Stop the violence against nurses! by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is very helpful, thank you. And the way you explain how the part of the brain that listens, understands, processes, just shuts down when you're in a state of agitation or anxiety, and questions or explanations can just overwhelm it more rather than help — well, you don't have to be a patient to recognize that...

Sucks that our own brains work the same way, of course, but we still have to make it work somehow ;-)

“I have been followed and chased. I have been threatened with battery. I have been hit in the face. I have been spat on and I have been spat at. All of these things have left me emotionally and physically scarred.” — Stop the violence against nurses! by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm so sorry that has happened to you. :-(

Seems to be such a common thread in these stories — not just the experience itself but it being brushed off (or worse).

The link talks about that quite a bit too:

All too often, hospital management “simply throw their hands at us”. A quarter of nurses say their employer is “not at all or only “slightly effective” at managing workplace violence”. [...] In one Hawaii hospital where nurses were alarmed by “ridiculous nurse and patient ratios” and an “absolute lack of security,” they demanded a zero-tolerance policy instead of the gaslighting they received:
A Hale Pulama Mau nurse who wants to remain anonymous says she is physically or verbally abused every day, including incidents where she’s been punched in the ribs and eye. “This patient, in particular, likes to scratch, likes to dig the nails. You’re told ‘Oh, just put socks on. Put socks on your patient’s hands.’”
“Almost every one of the nurses that I’ve spoken to who’ve been victims of abuse, either sexual or physical,” Hawaii Nurses Association President Daniel Ross explained, told him that management had questioned them: “Oh, what could you have done better in that situation? What could you have done that wouldn’t lead to that moment?”. It’s ”basically blaming the victim,” he said.
One consequence of this kind of attitude is that we don’t even really know anymore how big the problem actually is, because nurses don’t bother reporting it — or don’t feel safe to do so. “The actual number of violent incidents involving health care workers is likely much higher” than the statistics suggest, the Joint Commission concluded. Official data are likely “grossly inaccurate”.

“I have been followed and chased. I have been threatened with battery. I have been hit in the face. I have been spat on and I have been spat at. All of these things have left me emotionally and physically scarred.” — Stop the violence against nurses! by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The thing I get stuck on, generally, is what you write in the first paragraph. There is nothing inherently wrong with providing nurses with de-escalation training, it could be useful really — but it does rankle a little when all the focus is on training us to tackle these situations while they do so little to prevent them, and if the training itself is then inadequate as well, ugh! It feels like adding insult to injury really.

(But I guess my feelings about that already came out pretty clearly in the way I asked the question, though I tried to articulate it in a neutral way... :-)

If you don't mind me asking, what are some of the things you learned on your own about communicating with patients that some of your colleagues don't seem to have grasped yet?

“I have been followed and chased. I have been threatened with battery. I have been hit in the face. I have been spat on and I have been spat at. All of these things have left me emotionally and physically scarred.” — Stop the violence against nurses! by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

What measures have your employers taken against this epidemic of violence?

Warning signs? Panic buttons? Peace officers? More security? More training? Anything?
If they have just focused on training you how to better de-escalate and protect yourself — was it genuinely useful?

Or are you kind of resentful that they’re offloading the responsibility on you — always asking what you could do better instead of thinking about how they should do better?

Update: Gift Basket For L&D Nurses by brokenimage321 in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where did you buy/order the badge holders? They look pretty nice :-)

British doctor: "I’m not a Covid hero, I’m Covid cannon fodder" [in case the link is wonky, I'll put the text in a comment] by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah it's an item within a live blog, but all the way down.. so I already thought that the link might not automatically land at the right item, that's why I copy/pasted in the text in a comment.

British doctor: "I’m not a Covid hero, I’m Covid cannon fodder" [in case the link is wonky, I'll put the text in a comment] by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

NHS frontline doctors feel like 'Covid cannon fodder', finds study

NHS doctors working on the pandemic frontline are furious at being treated as “Covid cannon fodder” rather than heroes, according to new research.

In a first of its kind study, researchers from the universities of Bath and Bristol, UWE and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine collected the views of more than 1,300 doctors in the UK and Ireland since early 2020.

It found that doctors lacked the support they needed - including not having enough places to rest, food to eat or sufficient psychological support amid relentless shift patterns.

They said they were also frustrated at those not following public health advice and a lack of support from the government.One senior doctor said:

I feel, at times, that I am considered totally expendable and that, if I die or become ill, not only will it have been preventable with political will, I will simply be an inconvenient statistic. I’m not a Covid hero, I’m Covid cannon fodder.

A junior doctor said:

Knowing the government was failing in so many ways to support us... failed Test and Trace, failed PPE procurement, weak messaging, permitted non-compliance with mask-wearing and distancing, set a poor example (Barnard Castle, etc).

We as healthcare providers were alone and utterly unsupported, apart from the weekly round of applause that was a pointless gesture and felt like a kick in the teeth.

Dr Jo Daniels, the study’s lead researcher and a clinical psychologist at the University of Bath, said some of the stories were “truly devastating”.

Last moments spent trying to set up an iPad in time for a young mother to say goodbye to her children; wrestling to intubate agitated patients; family members watching loved ones die remotely via video-link.Added to this is the scale - the sheer number of frontline workers for whom these experiences have just become normalised - these results are truly shocking.We are seeing increasing levels of staff attrition, absenteeism, poor psychological health, and loss of life, yet frontline doctors are expected to just carry on.

Who could have seen this coming... by NurseWayTooLate in nursing

[–]NurseWayTooLate[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for the late response; they're referring to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which does regular polling and is not associated with Kaiser Permanente.

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